


Jessily

by Kastaka



Category: Maelstrom LARP
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 05:39:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 30,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10780689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: Compilation of Jessily fic from lrpdrabbles





	1. First Impressions

She'd hardly given him a second glance at first, except for cataloging him - human, called Horn, on my side, looks like this. There were so many people who dazzled and spoke loudly.

Slowly, other labels begin to attach themselves to him. Competent. Knows about money. Knows about how to get things. That dagger. It isn't until the morning that the picture comes together - the determination, the offhand comment about the Comte. That tight, thin smile.

She felt like running away, or crying, but slowly she was coming to see that the world was like this, and these people were her best option.

That the only safety was insanity, and everything ends in blood.

\----

Is it undead?

Seems to belong to Havocstan. Not introduced. Not sure if it's friendly.

That's a disturbing face to wear if it is among the living.

\----

That one. Symbol. Angel? Undead?

One of theirs. Ours. Theirs. An argument. Probably undead then. Not bad looking. 

I kind of want to stroke her muzzle. Is that wrong?

\----

She saw them from time to time, the girls with their hair covered, not really looking in her direction. She wanted to say hello, to introduce herself, to play with the shiny things that dangled from some of their headscarves, but they were always busy or guarded or she made up some other excuse because she worried of what they might think of her. 

Their men were terrifying and all serious or important or distant, and none of the people she thought of as her people interacted with the girls directly while she was there, so she couldn't introduce herself on that pretext.

She'd get around to it eventually. Not today.


	2. We Walked In Fields Of Gold

They call them the Free Islands, but not all of them are free.

From the time the raiders broke into the room, all burning pitch and cutlasses, I knew that I was dead.

Once the spell is broken, you can't go back.

We did not see violence nor did we smell death, although we walked in fields of golden fur, the provenance of which went unremarked upon. We were tainted by violence the moment that the door fell crashing from its hinges. We would have joined our cousins, draping the ground and the walls with our finery, had we been rescued.

Everything ends in blood.


	3. Soul Visualiser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon: "The Amici Institute of Science unveils their greatest invention yet: A device that allows a creature to visualise, with perfect clarity, their own soul. What happens when your character undergoes self-analysis?"

She bounded over to the goggles and shoved her face against them, and the chaos filled her eyes and kept her there, transfixed. The main view was an incomprehensible swirl of rainbow colours, everything at once in great profusion everywhere, all at full saturation and dancing with itself around and around. Out of the corner of her eye around the edges she thought she kept glimpsing things, like the face of the man who knew her true name, the glorious visage of the dragon, the stern dracoscions guarding a door, and humans and wemics in vast profusion with whom she had shared herself.

When they dragged her away (for she would have stayed there forever, drowning in it, if they had not) the details fled as swiftly as a dream. If she had remembered, though, one thing would have puzzled her - where was the girl, lying bleeding on the floor? Where was the blood?

Maybe it had just not had time to seep in yet.


	4. Into The Carnival

She had barely taken ten steps into the carnival when she saw the snake-women. The other passers-by had been strange enough, new accents and colours and kinds of people she'd only heard about, but this was something quite new.

At first she just looked out of the strangeness of it, although there was no shortage of strangeness here, between the huge grey-furred mokosh and the bird-people and a collection of grey statue people in bright blue tabards emblazoned with a bright yellow sun. And that was without even considering the angels, so many angels, or maybe they were demons, or those creatures who once wore flesh but had cast it off.

Some of the angels were quite terrifying. One skull-headed and primitively adorned angel, she couldn't help noticed, wore a loincloth constructed from the fur of a jaguar, the actual creature. She tried not to think about what this might mean.

She had just decided that the half-naked snake lady was very beautiful and was considering how to approach her without having to participate in her flogging contest when one of the statue people interrupted her reverie to ask if she was lost. It seemed the most natural thing in the world just to talk to him like any other person, answer his questions - after all, stranger things happened in dreams, and that was the quality this world had taken on, the feeling of a dream.

Then there was another angel, much more like she had expected from one of the Jaguar's angels if she'd had any expectations worth mentioning, golden skin and bright harlequin colours. It hugged her and sent her to a priest, and if the priest happened to be apparently constructed of wood and leaf, that was scarcely the strangest thing she had seen today, and the religious argument he was engaged in was comfortingly familiar.

If you had told her then of the blood and her future behaviour towards another eidolon graced with a death's-head for a face, she would not have believed you, but it does not take much of this everyday strangeness, this New World chaos, to facilitate change.


	5. Ongoing Impressions

I caught Sasagani's eye as I scanned the crowd in the direction that he'd indicated, and she smiled just like I was back on the island and she'd come to teach me how to dance. It was a comfort and a welcome, and I probably held her gaze longer than I should because it was just such a relief to see that here.

She was constantly busy and when I did manage to catch her again she didn't actually turn out to need to speak with me and brushed me off, but it was the kind of gentle brush-off that a busy tutor or house-servant would give, not the military harshness that pervaded this place.

It wasn't until I saw her with the blood running from her mouth that I even connected her with the creature I'd seen before, bruise-faced and distant and stern, but I didn't waste much time thinking about it, just connected one to the other and left it at that.

\----

You couldn't help glimpsing Rheinfelden, here and there, all around camp. All of the mokosh made Jessily nervous, not helped by gleeful tales of not offering your hand to be shaken and staunching wounds with bread. She tried to keep out of their way, but the camp was so crowded sometimes.

She couldn't quite meet his eyes out there in the centre of the circle, trying to introduce herself. Couldn't quite see beyond the snout and the armour and the teeth. Being told to speak up almost made her burst into tears - couldn't he see that she was trying, that she could hardly breathe? - but she raised her halting, stammering voice because somehow she had to make a life for herself here, somehow she had to be strong.

Overhearing him later, sitting around camp in the firelight, he seemed pretty much like a person, really. She almost spoke in the conversation he was having, but she couldn't quite bring herself to, not yet. 

When the bench was moved she hung around awkwardly until he'd gone. Sitting behind him, she could almost convince herself that it was okay, that she was very unlikely to be suddenly torn limb from limb by his powerful jaws, but sitting facing him wasn't something she could do right now.

\----

I can't quite remember when I managed to attach a name to the efficient little human in black. Jocelyn. She looked serious and busy, although in the kind of way I had some hope of categorising, rather than any of this confusing military back and forth that was going on.

Mostly I remember her as a means to an end, a face that was at once motherly and mischievous as my newfound friend pushed me into the centre of the circle and I made some joke about shielding Jocelyn from the spectacle with my cloak while she laughed and handed out the cause of the next hour's inebriation.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like most people treat her the same way, though - scenery, a dispenser of things, a means to an end - and the more I remember a sadness behind the laughing eyes.

\----

Dirge stopped being an indistinguishable mokosh when he rescued them from dinner.

Yes, he was tall and imposing and could probably swallow her in one mouthful, but something about him being undead made her perversely less scared of him, even though in her mind she knew that he was probably harder than any of the others.

Or maybe it was the way that he nodded at them after Amal's sharp vision had pointed him towards a short altercation with someone they'd been looking to kill. Acknowledging them as useful, as part of his community.

After that she didn't twitch when the others mentioned he might be a good bodyguard for a foray out of camp, looked for him hopefully even. Better him than one of the other mokosh who still lived and breathed and, she couldn't help imagining, hungered for her flesh.

\----

I didn't know the other girl was Violet until much later, when I timidly asked someone to point her out to me after being informed that she was a fellow Jaguarite. But I knew she professed the faith and that Primus and Cassy vouched for her and hence it was fine that she was in the shrine, taking part in what was probably the most surreal orgy I have ever been part of.

I'd put her down as just another Jaguar girl when I made some kind of inappropriate comment and found out that she was actually quite important, and stood wondering whether I'd offended her while she explained quite how thoroughly she outranked me, although I don't think she meant it like that.

Sometimes it was hard to reconcile the Violet that people spoke about 'worshipping on her knees' - the wild girl I'd seen in the shrine - and the calm, confident Violet who walked about camp doing a much better job of not being underfoot than me. Maybe some day I'd be able to manage that too, that separation of pleasure and duty.

\----

Not much to say about Detail Marshall. One of that family. Smiles a lot. Less mouthy than Fiona, but by the look in his eyes, not due to fewer opinions, or less desire to say that kind of thing. Just more control.

Nice shade of blue. Really doesn't go with the hair.

\----

I wonder why that one doesn't talk to me, doesn't meet my eyes. Nobody mentions it or refers to it, but it's obviously one of us by the way they let it walk in and out. It doesn't look actively dangerous like some of the others so I try to get in its way once or twice, try to catch its eye to see what's in there, but it neatly sidesteps and goes about its business, whatever that might be. Later I learn that it is called Khaniel, and it doesn't like wemics much.

\----

"Jig's taking this whole thing remarkably well."

Jessily looked skeptical, and scared, always scared.

"Sure, he looks relaxed, but watch him when he talks to people. His eyes are like murder."

\----

I'd seen her once or twice, one of the Bastet, but she didn't really become a separate person to me until the wedding.

I didn't see the actual ceremony, but I watched her walking with Marcus, watched her in abject confusion and with a kind of sick fascination. Why did she look so unhappy, if weddings were meant to be a good thing?


	6. Like A Dance

Life is like a dance.

Love is like a fire.

Burning in ecstasy we will rise to grace.

There is a jungle in her heart. She knows because now she has seen a jungle. The jungle is a dance. It soars on the wings of brilliantly coloured birds, scampers in the easy grace of golden-furred monkeys. It is in the jungle that the Jaguar resides, prowling through the profusion of life, taking what it wants in power and in joy.

Life is like a fire.

Love is like a dance.

Sometimes she doesn't know the steps any more. Sometimes she falters. She sits in the jungle and she thinks on her failures. And her successes. There is a new world here indeed. The Jaguar inside her can do anything - claim anything. All it has to do is stretch out its claws.

Her god is like a fire. Her god is like a dance.

Her god has blood on its claws.

She watches the people of the jungle. She is not one of these people. Her god has blood on its claws.

She licks absently at where her claws should be. The ghost of a metallic tang caresses her tongue.

It is so beautiful.


	7. Nursery Rhyme

There was always music in the nursery, always music. The strumming of harps, the soaring of violins, the gentle hypnotic drumbeats. Always music, but hardly ever singing.

Wemics didn't sing.

There were nursemaids, from time to time, who hummed as they went about their business, snatches of words escaping from their lips while they were occupied with some other task. Cecily, one of the older kits told her in hushed tones, had sung them to sleep for a while. It was hard to believe that the cowed, subdued little woman could ever have done something as strong-willed as singing. Why, she could barely speak above a whisper.

Ah no, they said, she doesn't sing any more. One of her charges burst into song, you see, while practicing a dance, no less.

Jessily nods sadly. Part of her knows what happened, and part of her doesn't want to know, so she doesn't, but she pretends she does.

Sometimes humans sang. The voice is an instrument. But not one which should be polluted by words.   
And anyway, wemics didn't sing.


	8. Nursery Rhyme, Redux

Singing or no, children will always make up rhymes to taunt each other with - and adults will seed their rhymes with truth...

Tarren, Tarren,  
Kissed the dragon,  
Tarren, Tarren,  
Got no fur

Dragon, dragon,  
Burnt it right off  
There's no fur there any more!

Hyon, Hyon,  
Kissed the scion,  
Hyon, Hyon,  
Got no balls!

Scion, scion,  
Sliced them right off  
There's no balls there any more!

*cue much giggling and kissing each other and pretending to breathe fire*

Jessily suspects that they had to make the names up every time, and it's a real hassle trying to think up sensible names that rhyme with 'scion'. And the names always seemed to come out male - what was with that, anyway?

She wondered if they were still chanting it, back on the island. Daring each other. Thinking they were showing courage. It was only a game, to them.


	9. Ongoing Impressions, pt2

"By the power of the Maelstrom and of Jaguar, shut up!"

Horn was so much happier now, so much happier that she could hardly see the man he'd been, who she had longed to make happy but had been too scared to try. She had never thought that she would see him broken, and she had never thought that she would see him mended.

And it _was_ totally hilarious when he silenced poor Emile.

\----

"And three hundred yards behind them, you'll find me," said Emile.

Her thoughts confused her, chasing in circles around the truth. Standing in a doorway, not wanting to watch. _Please just see it in my eyes._ Everyone thought she was crying for the dead, but she wasn't.

She had seen the kittens, and finally she understood.

\----

"I've got to go now. They're calling me."

She sat there nervous as Walker dreamily replaced his dagger in its sheath, arranging his guns and cutlery around his belt, still moving as if in a trance.

"Don't worry. I'll come with you."

It felt strange not being the youngest any more.

\----

"It's all about holes with you, isn't it?"

It's all about the holes with Violet, and that's disturbing. The girl's got gentle hands, but she isn't as shallow as the others. She isn't as shallow as she tries to make out, giggling in that schoolgirl fashion. 

But she doesn't have to be shallow for it to be all about the holes.

\----

"Oh, Unas has just knocked someone over."

There must be more to Unas somewhere. She knows there must be more to him because Rheinfelden made him a Captain, or something like that. But whenever she sees him, he's either standing there stiffly to attention, or hissing and spitting and in the process of cunting something in the face.

There must be more to Unas somewhere, but all he really does at the moment is contribute to the way that she really doesn't like male wemics.

\----

"I'll go ask someone boring in armour. They'll know."

Once, she'd have known them by their golden scales. The ones who are a little above, a little to the side, whose job it is to know what is going on. Here, it's the plate armour, and not just any kind of plate. 

She glances through the camp and finds Helena, and Helena does know.

\----

"They're asking for you, Jocelyn."

Standing by the front lines in borrowed trousers. Shepherding Priest's young facet out of the camp. Everyone is damp and downhearted, and it is at times like this that the steel, no, the diamond shows through the silk, through the refinement that makes even her borrowed clothes look like noble finery.

It will take more than mud, more than death, more than pain, more than the community falling apart to break Jocelyn. Jessily looks on her strength with envy, wondering if she will find the same within herself one day.

\----

_He isn't meant to be here._

She watched the people come and go from the camp, in all their kinds and all their colours. He moved furtively, patterns - scars? - on his face, layers of clothing stacked haphazardly one on top of the other, not fitting into any of the categories that she had been carefully collating.

"Oh, he's just one of the Scholars."

She learns a little more, the next season. He's got something to do with the little one with bells in her hair. With bells in her hair, and scars on her cheeks, and sturdy boots, and dead. He drew the picture in their shrine. She looks at him with a new respect. He knows the gods well. But she doubts that he sees her. His eyes are buried in sorrow.

"And we haven't seen Raoul since the morning."

She isn't sure of the time of day, but it scarcely matters. They are reading Jig's will. There will be no chance for her to know the Scholars. Not as they were when Raoul drew that picture.

\----

"I know this is a bad time, but the kittens need feeding."

She saw the kittens, and she understood.

She understood why someone might want to bind their life to another.

She understood why Sha had looked sad to her, and why Sha was happy and sad all at the same time.

She understood why someone like Sha might pick someone like Marcus.

She understood why she would probably never have kittens of her own.

As she stood guard outside the tent she was crying, and it wasn't for the dead, no, it wasn't for the dead. 

She could comfort others for the dead, but she was crying for those born into such a place as this, and she was crying for the never to be born.


	10. Cretins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon dream episode

"The tavern's full of cretins and the Militiaman's is shut," complained Horn as they headed out to some dubious establishment on the edge of the camp that nevertheless probably had somewhere warm to sit, something to drink and some people to watch or harangue.

The sole inhabitants of the dingy army tent, apart from the near-invisible human bartender, were two brown gnolls (or maybe they were Merisusi mokosh, or even Kamakurans very down on their luck, Jessily wasn't sure how she was meant to be able to tell) sitting a little way apart nursing their drinks and occasionally glowering at each other.

Horn got some drinks and some seats where they could look out into the twilit forest, and was just getting restless enough to talk to the nearest gnoll when Jessily spotted a group of people heading out into the forest, headed (from the middle of the pack, of course) by none other than the Comte himself.

"Horn," she said, "Should we go and see what the Comte's up to?"

Horn took a look at the small, serious-looking expedition going past outside. "Yes, let's."

The pair of Rainbows swiftly caught up with the expedition, much to the displeasure of some lady called Ekaterina who appeared to be the relevant military leader.

"Hmm?" she said, clearly waiting for the pair to introduce themselves.

"We're from Havocstan," explained Jessily. "We saw the Comte might be going into danger, and as allies we're here to help."

"What are you wearing, hmm? Got any weapons?" she sneered at Jessily, who showed her the armour and the knives, and when she sniffed at the knives Jessily pointed out the surgeon's tools and claimed she was a combat medic.

They followed the party in silence into the woods some way, until they came across a curious door set into the side of a hill. There was a strange device next to it, which one of the Comte's men operated, causing the 'door' (really just a panel of metal, it appeared) to slide back into a slot carved in the hill. Beyond the door there was a stone-dressed antechamber with two passageways leading forwards.

The man who had operated the door ushered them all inside, whereupon the door closed itself again with the same eerily silent movement, and a low growling could be heard from the right-hand passageway. Jessily was just worrying about what could be making such a noise when part of the wall between the passageways began to glow, and writing began to appear on the glowing area.

_Beyond the tigers, you can find the reporting and feedback station for this training centre. The combatants will not pursue beyond the bottom of the ramp. Activating viewing window._

At first Jessily thought the wall was somehow retracting into the floor, but after a moment's thought she realised that the bottom half wasn't moving, it was just that the top of the wall was turning into a window. She didn't have long to puzzle over it, because just then a large striped cat leapt out of the right-hand passageway and began to set about attacking the group. She tried to keep them between her and it, but it seemed that it was specifically seeking out people attempting such a thing, and it made short work of her armour before she even got her knives out. 

Fortunately it was felled from behind before it could give her more than an unpleasant scratch, and she hastily dispatched the thing with her dagger, dealing with that problem.

"Stay out and be ready to heal," advised Horn as the others advanced up the left-hand slope.

At first, Jessily was all too glad for that instruction, but as the fight went badly and Horn disappeared under a tide of humanoid creatures with a strangely wooden way of moving, she had to sit down at the foot of the ramp to suppress the urge to run up and start trying to help, or at least pull the bodies out. She closed her eyes and rocked back and forth, until suddenly the last man standing was rolling the fallen down the ramp towards her, then pitching forwards unconscious himself from a blow to the back.

Both Horn and the Comte were bleeding and she didn't know for how long. (Ekaterina was bleeding too, but she certainly wasn't going to prioritise her, the bitch.) Every second she wasted deciding which one to treat first was a second by which the other might not live. She sprang to the aid of the Comte - she remembered he had medical skills of his own, and also self-preservation told her that it'd look pretty bad if they went to 'help' him and only the two of them came out alive.

She practically shoved the Escharotic Pumice that she always carried down the Comte's throat, and wailed, "Horn's dying! Save him!" as she went to help Ekaterina (no need for her to bleed out if it could be avoided, after all).

"Amputate?" asked the recently unconscious Comte.

"Left arm," muttered Jessily, busy with her tools, "we can get it replaced, just don't let him die."

Miraculously, none of those who had entered the battle died (fortunately the other soldiers weren't actually bleeding), and when they were all approximately on their feet, Ekaterina and the Comte wanted to continue.

"No," insisted Jessily. "There's another tiger to the right and most of your men are in no shape to continue."

She was quite surprised when the others actually acquiesced to this - maybe almost dying and being saved by her had meant more than she thought. The door wouldn't let the man out who had got in - he placed his hand on a square of glass and something in the wall carefully wrote 'Dead' underneath the plate - but when Jessily put her hand to the glass (without taking her glove off, even) it wrote "Access Granted - Crafter' instead. She stood across the gap, back to the place the door had disappeared into, and yelled at everyone to move through the door as quickly as possible. Even so, they only just escaped before it closed once more.

The woods were entirely dark now, and confusing. The Comte took Horn aside for a private conversation, and suddenly Jessily was lost and couldn't see any of her party. Taking out her knives, she crept quietly through the darkness, and had almost made it to the tavern (the actual Trade Winds Tavern, not the creepy place on the outskirts they'd came from) when she was grabbed by two lurking women.

She screamed at the top of her lungs, but people only hurried away from the scene, and she had to close her mouth when one of the women attempted to pour a potion down it. She freed her arms enough to lash out at her captors, which surprised them sufficiently that she managed to grab the potion bottle and sprint the last few feet into the Trade Winds, where she spotted Fiona Marshall and a couple of her family with great relief.

"Tell me what this is," she demanded as she took a seat heavily in the midst of them.

"What happened?" asked Fiona, studying the bottle intently.

"Some women tried to feed it to me outside," explained Jessily. She spotted the women in the exit she'd just run through. "Those two," she pointed them out.

Fiona handed the bottle off to someone Jessily didn't recognise, who handed it back saying, "Soul pact."

At about that point, Horn burst in through the main entrance, looking around worriedly. Jessily waved and he stormed over, followed by some armed men she didn't recognise.

"Thank the Jaguar you're alright," he said.

"I almost wasn't," replied Jessily. "Get those two women over there, would you?" And she pointed out the ladies who were conferring in the entrance. Unfortunately they saw her this time and made to leg it, but Horn and his men were hot on their trail.

"You're okay, you didn't drink enough of it," Fiona reassured her.

Jessily sighed. "I am absolutely not leaving this place at all again tonight," she declared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dream also helpfully supplied, after it had ended and my brain was doing housekeeping on it, the result of making the other choice: Horn got up and immediately slit the throat of some poor unfortunate soldier with his Thief of Life, the Comte turned out to have been downed recently enough or have enough fortitude to survive being treated second, then the Comte amputated Ekaterina and Jessily treated the soldier that Horn had started bleeding. (After that events continued as before, although Horn had both of his arms when he showed up in the tavern at the end, and it was implied that Ekaterina deliberatly made sure Jessily got separated from the party because she was irritated about losing an arm.)
> 
> This has been edited from the original dream for consistancy a bit. The main differences are with the fight scene with the tiger (where for some reason the Dauphin was present in a pushchair and the tiger got to Jessily because everyone else was rallying around him, and Jessily actually got knocked over rather than only taking one hit) and the fight scene on the screen (where Jessily actually watched the whole thing and there was some inadequately explained mechanism where she could reach through and drag people out herself).


	11. If I Was Better

"Arrigato," she says, as she hands me the flowers. I smile at her. (It would be a weak smile, but I know enough not to let that show.) We pass compliments back and forth. There's a jealousy to it, underneath, a jealousy and a terror, but I don't let her see that, I hope I don't let her see that.

The other wemics hold the babies and I feel inadequate, awkward, out of place. She smiles at me in that faint way of hers and I want to shout from the rooftops, _I was there, I saw it happen,_ want to explain the blood and the chaos and the way it felt to see her there pale and tired and proud and alive, but... everyone knows. All of these polite, smiling faces. Everyone knows how things begin. In blood.

I put the flowers in my belt, knowing it's the wrong answer, but I cannot bear not to have my hands free, even here. _If I was better,_ a little voice tells me, _if I was better I would know what to do with them, I would put them in my hair, I would put them in a vase, I would bow and I would thank her in the right way that didn't lead to endless cascades of politeness._

But I am not better, and later I abandon them as they shed fragrant blossoms and leaves across the chair and the floor, and later I plant them in a bottle so all can enjoy them, and it's not quite that I don't wonder what she thinks of how I handled them, but rather that I don't have space to process it, don't believe that it makes a difference worth caring about.

There are so many cares, and the flowers look pretty on the table.

Sasagani does not need my help.

\----

"I've got to go and find Horn now."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"I... left the room in something of a hurry." It's true. "He might be looking for me." It's true. "I don't want him coming round door-to-door..." All the parts are true, but together it's a lie.

"Okay," he says, with obvious reluctance.

Grateful, she almost flees the room. He'll be down in the gun room with the oco victims. She needs to tell him... to ask him... she hears, a long way away and faintly, the sound of the sea. It sounds like drowning.

"What's up, Jessily?"

She looks at him and she can't, she can't tell him what to do, she can't tell him what she wants him to do. She can't tell him that her world is ending and that all the plates are going to come crashing down and that she knew they would and she did it anyway.

There must be someone else. Someone she can talk to. Someone she can confide in. Her desperate gaze reaches around the room, searching for an answer. She teases Jason James for a few moments of calm, a few crumbs of joy. She takes Unas' drink and refills it. Settling accounts, tying off loose ends, buying time and space to think.

There is no-one else. She begs him to keep his voice down, to keep quiet, but either he doesn't understand or he does understand all too well. As they walk down the corridor she feels a certain lightness, even as she feels like crying and running and being sick, the kind of lightness that you feel on the way to your execution.

(and then it all falls apart and there is running and there is death and there is hope but it stays with her, what she learned in that room, that there is no-one else)

\----

I see her in the corners. I hear of her in whispers.

"The General was saying something about that." "The General wanted us to reorganise the division." "The General doesn't like that."

She stands like a ruler. She moves like a ghost.

"She's a great military leader, but..."

She moves in the shadows, too distant to touch.

\----

Every time she looks at the Comte, she can't help it. She can't help thinking about... them.

She can't help thinking about how much she wants to watch.

It distracts her when she knows she ought to be thinking, ought to be staying aware, because she also knows that she can trust him about as far as she can throw this castle, and it's hard to remember that when she's looking at that smile and thinking of what else it's been smiling at. When she's made the soldier in the game she can't help but protect him even though he'd make a dangerous enemy as well as a useful ally and there's no way she could tell yet.

And she can't ask, can't ask outright, although the Seraph's Tear makes her bold and she suggests things that would lead to it. Suggestions that don't implicate her so much. Suggestions that will, she realises after she comes down from the drug, never happen.

But she can't ask, because this is just for her, and there's so much that needs doing for other people.

\----

Talking to the angels. Their words turn into whispers. The marks on her cheek from the Winter Palace Guard.

I almost ask her. I almost tell her. But my heart is filled with doubts. She smiles at me politely. She's not giving anything away. _Take me or leave me,_ says the look in her eyes. _I tolerate you. You're amusing. But you're not important to me yet._

I don't know if I want to be important to her, so I turn away.

\----

_I am here for you._

She looks up at the cloaked, huddling figure with hope and sadness.

_We are here for you. It's okay. It's going to be alright._

People come. People go. Sometimes just a look chases them away.

_I'm here. I'll be quiet. I'm standing between you and the world._

Later, she sees them in the room together. Smiles softly. Closes the door.

_It's not all about the holes, is it now, Violet?_

\----

Bess is wearing that dress. She's smiling in her eyes. She's well supplied with love and with consumables.

She's beautiful, and everyone can see that, so I don't have to.

\----

Justice stalks in the background. Not as loud as the others, in form or in voice. Like he's used to his nature, used to himself, at home in his own... skin? Power? More like an angel - collected, focussed, knowing what he is and what he's doing.

Even if it is a pretense, as she half expects it to be, she can see why they put him in charge.

\----

It's his philosophy that resounds in her head as she listens to the Imperator's speech, listens to the words that make her blood run cold just for a moment.  
It's his philosophy that gives her the strength to sit with the young, broken soldier, even fearing that her erstwile friend might snap and kill her at any moment.  
It's his philosophy that lets her hold a hand and make a promise.

Afterwards she wants to find Sebastian, to bound up to him like an overexcited kitten yelling, "I did it! I did it! You don't have to shoot me!"

But she doesn't think he'll understand. Her kind of service is different to the service of a soldier.

\----

I feel kind of bad about Jocelyn. I saw her looking tired, and not talking to anyone. I should have gone and spoken to her, but I didn't have the words. What could I say to Jocelyn? Everything would have been impolite, or business, or meaningless. So I smiled at her and moved on.

\----

"She's a surgeon, isn't she?"

I keep half an eye on the situation I was trying to control, shaking as I try to work out how badly they've injured each other. Half of them have run off by the time I've attended to the injury that's most likely to leave a permanent mark.

Stupid monkey children should leave the catamite alone.

\----

The baby's arm dangles out of his grip, limply.

_You don't know how to be a father._

It's an uncharitable thought. It's not like she has any good role-models. It's not like she'd do any better.

_You know how to be a soldier, but you don't know how to be a father._

They dress in gold for the banquet, and she avoids them, knowing she's a hypocrite. She's dressed in gold, after all. But seeing them in it... it's not their colour. They have no right to it.

 _It doesn't mean the same to them,_ she reminds herself sternly. But the comparison hangs in the air.

Solid and distant. Mud and earth. Like the ones who labour in the fields, stoically, waiting for their chance for glory. But someone gave him his scales before he was ready, and now he thinks the world of himself.

 _You don't know him,_ she tells herself, _you shouldn't be judging._

But she does, all the same.


	12. Civilisation

"Horn sent me."

Glad I didn't lose you in the forest, then. Hold this. It'll keep your hands busy while I try to work out if you're lying or not.

Look me in the eyes. What are you here for?

Are you here to keep me out of trouble, because Horn knows if I have someone to look after then I'll act more responsibly?

Maybe you're Horn's idea of backup, a bodyguard, someone to make it two against one if the opportunity presents itself.

Maybe he heard what I said to Emile about snakes that night. Maybe you're some kind of misguided present.

Or... maybe... maybe he knows me better than I thought...

Whatever it is, I'm going to... to... to make idle threats.

At least you've got a pretty smile. Just got to hope you won't stab me in my sleep.

\----

"And I got this close," she indicates a very small distance, "to stealing Jason James' supply of Seraph's Tear."

"Don't do that," he said, suddenly serious.

"He'd left it behind when he went to bed," she explained.

"Oh, that's okay then," he replied, laughing. "If he's that stupid then..."

"But Canashir got to it first," she continued. "It's probably just as well. I would only have committed a serious diplomatic incident."

\----

She's no longer sure how much she knew him before - a few remarks by others, a few sightings around the fire. It was only among the Sephirot that he solidified as a person to her, rather than an interchangeable member of Havocstan, or at least the group of people she shouldn't be worried about seeing around the camp, the people who she could stay near if there was trouble.

There's a confidence about him, as unfamiliar politics and serious debates clutter the air with words and make an assault on her tired mind. There's a confidence and a safety, too, a feeling that you'd know long before he snapped, that a little teasing will be taken in good part. It's a feeling she doesn't get much from the people she usually spends time with, and she takes advantage of it, but hopefully not too much.

She keeps track of where he is, from time to time, in the fortress. Bess is wearing the yellow dress with the turquoise ribbons and all seems to be right with the world. She keeps his location in mind as a refuge, but the thought of using him as a confidante doesn't even enter her mind when she's stumbling, mind reeling, looking for someone to talk to.

He smiles at her from time to time, greets her as they pass, and part of her wants to follow him around. Part of her wants to stay in the circle of firelight he casts with his antics and ignore the darkness and the cold. But part of her hears the howl of the coyote from the edge of the trees, and she knows that she cannot be happy while her friends are in danger, and so she turns away.


	13. Gentle

She skidded around the corner and almost ran straight into them. He'd moved rooms, he wasn't even in the blue room any more.

She couldn't be more than ten seconds ahead of the angel.

It was all so simple. Just a few words, and she'd occupy both of her pursuers. She'd have a moment to think, to gather her breath, to maybe find the person she was looking for.

Around the corner, she ate another cinnamon biscuit, regained her equilibrium. Then she walked out of the deserted dining room again, calmly, to make her next move.

\----

"Only if you're gentle."

She smiles and turns just so, demonstrating her smallness, her fragility. Displaying herself by reflex, inviting admiration and care. It's a survival instinct for her, like breathing, like the way your feet run for you in the night leaving your eyes and mind to search the bushes for your pursuers.

Seraph's Tear prevents guilt, prevents shame, prevents doubt, but it does nothing about the fear.

\----

"You can think about a person, or a question."

The cards are... frustrating. She blames the drug, in a way. Which is her heart, and which is her head? Both have cases for and against. It's because she ignored the instructions, maybe. While she phrased the question carefully in her mind, the question in her heart did have that kind of answer she'd been told to avoid. Yes, or no.

She gathered her heart, and made her choice. "It means learning from mistakes." The fear clawed around the edges of her mind, but she had accepted the worst parts, and it was left idly directing her thoughts to a vague worry about how much it would hurt.

\----

"You had better not be called away again," she said as she swallowed the black confection. Then everything was lust and power and joy. She traced his form with her fingers, with her tongue, trying to stay calm, to stay in control, to learn the ways of this unfamiliar body. She watched his eyes and listened to the noises that he made. She knew that she was good at this and she would not be dissuaded.

When the door rattled she had no space in her mind for speech, only a feral sound that she had not realised that she had in her. This was hers, she had claimed it, she had chosen it, and she would claw the face off those who interrupted them... if she had claws, and if it would not mean she'd have to move from here, which she never wanted to do, maybe never again.

\----

Afterwards - after the second time, after terror and apology and as her body still vibrated from the aftermath of ecstacy - he held her hand and looked at her.

"They took my claws as a child."

She held his hand and looked at him.

"I will be here for you," she promised, "for as long as I can."


	14. Pansy

Underneath, I think we're pretty much the same, Ima.

You have your finery, your culture, your artiface. You wear it like I wear my armour and my knives. You have your knowing smile, your sophistry, your knowledge. You wear them like I wear my faith and my innocent face.

I see you speaking with Glaive, with the angel, about the gods. You're clever. You're careful. You return one argument and then the other, keeping your own mind to yourself. When it hurts, you don't show it. Your smile just gets tighter.

You would make a fine dancer, but you're too clever to be caught.

\----

"Apparently I should call you a pansy or something."

There's a lot she could blame Sha for. The little brown wemic who, if he had any sense, is even now packing his bags and heading elsewhere. The deep sense of social inadequacy as the women of the Bastet laugh at some private joke.

There's a lot she could feel pity for. The headscarf, the husband, the inadequate shoes, the quiet laugh as if she's too embarrassed to let herself laugh properly. The walls that even Jessily can sense are built around her even here.

But mostly, like most things, it comes down to a hunger. There are hungers that are not the violent hungers of lust and blood, and here is one of them - that Sha makes room in her world for Jessily, and in return Jessily feels like she needs to learn how to behave, to impress Sha, and to act up now and then.

For all her distance, for all her culture, for all her circumstances, there's something about Sha that lets Jessily be a kitten again. And that's more valuable than Jessily would like to admit.

\----

The poor boy just had a gift for hilariously bad timing.

It couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes after Sha's challenge that the dozy Mamaluk came past their table right on cue. She called him a pansy and he looked adorably confused.

It was a week after she'd found someone to take the role that everyone was trying to manoever Unas into in her life, or at least as much of a version of it as she was likely to accept, that the machinations of his friends found him on seraph's and catamite and her on the sofa politely turning him down.

And it was when he was strung out on oco and Jaguar knows what else that she made what subtle apology she could for her inadvertant humiliation of the poor mamaluk. She felt bad about the gloating he'd had to suffer through afterwards, and so she'd tried to make amends in a few spare moments, but she doubted he even noticed the gesture, much less its significance.

He wasn't bad looking when he was happy. It was just a shame he'd had such hilariously bad timing.

\----

I feel I should know you, Liz. But I don't, I really don't.

There's something behind those wide open eyes, that broad smile, those lips of yours. There's a desperation in your cheer, a frustration in your smile, a hunger you hide behind a biddable face. It isn't Horn's hunger. It isn't Violet's hunger. It's something else, something I haven't quite got a handle on yet.

You say you want the boy, offer it up as an excuse for your actions, but I don't think it's that, I don't think you'd know what to do with him if you got him. There's something else there, something deeper.

And when I find out what it is, I'll feed you, if I can.

That, or make more idle threats.


	15. Tobbi

The dhow barely made it to the pier, nipping between larger ships that were disgorging their passengers under the watchful eye of two stern golden dracoscions.

One of them caught him by the shoulders as he tried to merge with the crowd.

"A moment's audience," he said calmly, "that's all I ask."

\----

"Ma'am."

The dragon gave him a look. It left him in no doubt as to her patience for niceties and formalities.

"You were going to solve my Huntress problem."

"Why, yes." He took a moment to straighten up and look earnest. "Let me introduce to you... the Jaguar."


	16. A High Honour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon: challenge response to What if your character had not crossed the Maelstrom?

The night the pirates came was the stuff of legend within hours of the fighting retreat across the island. Jessily offered up a silent prayer of thanks to the Jaguar that she had been in the other barracks, that she was not among the taken.

She was barely twenty when she had her first litter. It was acceptable, but no more than that. They tried her with another male or two, but her fur was quite fine, and there was no reason to let it go to waste.

She went quietly when she was summoned. In time - for craftsmanship should not be rushed - there was a new cushion on the dragon's couch.

A high honour, they said in whispers. Such a shame it did not breed true.


	17. Alone

She walks the dusty plains alone, chanting praises to an empty sky.

Secured to her wrist by a leather cord, the skull in her right hand, her free hand, feels heavy at her side. There is no good way to carry a skull in your hands. She shifts the weight of it, awkwardly, from time to time. The New World can be a place of sudden danger. She has no idea whether the cord would hold in a fight, but she thought she ought to make at least a token effort.

She cannot bear not to have her hands free.


	18. Keep the Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains non-canon ending

_Mother mother tell your children  
That their time has just begun_

She saw the kittens, and she understood.

She understood why someone might want to bind their life to another.

She understood why Sha had looked sad to her, and why Sha was happy and sad all at the same time.

She understood why someone like Sha might pick someone like Marcus.

She understood why she would probably never have kittens of her own.

As she stood guard outside the tent she was crying, and it wasn't for the dead, no, it wasn't for the dead.

She could comfort others for the dead, but she was crying for those born into such a place as this, and she was crying for the never to be born.

\---

_I have suffered for my anger  
There are wars that can't be won_

She watched him hovering in the doorway with her, not joining the festivities with the empty-minded, vacant girls who had come to entertain them. _This one?_

With a gnawing horror growing in her heart, she watched him talk of slaughter, of buying slaves to kill upon the altar. Of looking on while they died and delighting in the casual cruelty to those who could not fight back. Of subsisting forever on the work and the suffering of others, who'd done nothing but be in the wrong place in the wrong time and thence forever condemned to hell, which others enjoyed as heaven. She smiled at him, but the smile no longer reached her eyes. _Not this one._

\---

_Father father please believe me  
I am laying down my guns_

"So who you gonna follow, Horn?" asks the eidolon, his grin turned into something deadly serious. "You gonna follow Havocstan, or you gonna follow Jaguar?"

"As far as we can," he said, "we're going to follow both."

"Gonna follow both, huh?" the angel taunted. "So when Jaguar says, hunt and kill da abominations, hunt and kill those responsible for da abominations, and Olrich says don't kill da abominations, what'cha gonna do?"

"I have my plans," he said, "if it comes to it. But for now, we watch and wait."

"Watch and wait, huh?" The eidolon sounded unimpressed. "Watch and wait? You better watch your waiting, brieflife. The Jaguar, he don't wait."

\---

_I am broken like an arrow_

The rhind in the room was too much for her swimming head, still dozy on apricot wine, bad rum and the afterglow of catamite. She was back in the ocean, back in the dark waters, and around her there was screaming and gunfire and the splintering of wood.

She stumbled unsteadily from room to room, looking for something to ground her, something to hold onto, something that wouldn't break and shatter and wash away in the ocean. Someone who would understand.

Back in the room with the long table and the armchairs, the rhind smoke had calmed down a little, and she met the eyes of the other wemic she'd talked to a little at Civilisation. She didn't think she explained herself very well, but in his eyes she saw the ocean, and she knew he understood.

\---

_Forgive me  
Forgive your wayward son_

In the twists of smoke that rose from the rhind Horn had provided for Sasagani, she saw the sinuous tail of the dragon, a flash of golden scales in the air.

 _I was born to love,_ she told it, _and though I can't love you, I can't love you, yet I can love._

The dragon was walking away from her. It was strange to think that the creature still existed, over the ocean and far away. But she couldn't return yet. She couldn't destroy the life she'd once known yet, not without breaking it, not without death and chaos and a worse life for those she'd try to rescue than the one they'd been given.

\---

_Everybody needs somebody to love  
(mother, mother)_

"But... him?"

"I don't see what's so difficult," complained Jessily. "I don't see why you can't understand."

"You're a braver woman than I."

"It's not like that!" she protested. "You don't know what you're missing."

"I think I'll stay not knowing, thanks."

She didn't understand. Violet slept with Unas - he was easily over twice her size! Aestar had *shaken hands with herself* in this gentleman's *colon*! How was what she was doing worse than what they had done?

...and why did she think of something she _was doing_, rather than something she _had done_?

\---

_Everybody needs somebody to hate_

As the violin crashes to the floor, she knows exactly who to blame.

\---

_(please believe me)_

"I didn't... I thought it was politics... I didn't even think of that..."

"I don't... I would never..."

"Vague assurances are nobody's friend, kitten."

Her breath catches in her throat, because there are no words.

There are no words to say what she means, no words to say what she feels, no words to say what this means to her.

\---

_Everybody's bitching  
cause they cant get enough_

"If one of the others had gone missing, you'd have gone to look for them."

\---

_And it's hard to hold on  
When there's no one to lean on_

"I just don't want to be... taken for granted, you know?"

"You could just tell him."

"You don't understand. You really don't understand, do you?"

\---

_Faith: you know you're gonna live thru the rain  
Lord you got to keep the faith_

"Hey."

She catches up and matches stride with him. He rumbles something indistinct in reply. They head off together away from the pack.

\---

_Faith: don't you let your love turn to hate_

She sits alone in the room at the inn, cross-legged on the floor as the little brown wemic fusses around the furniture and straightens the already perfectly arranged bedclothes on the twin beds. She's holding the skull to start with, her lips moving without sound, but soon enough she puts it down, and the words subside back inside her own skull where they belong.

Later, as she is walking across an empty field speaking of the Jaguar's bounty in provision and the futility of farming, she remembers the Hunapha's challenge. "The sorcerous ritual that creates a volcano," they had asked for, then something else she had forgotten, then... "or proof that you can fool a god".

She hoped that she was not about to add more evidence to the contrary.

\---

_Now we've got to_  
Keep the faith  
Keep the faith  
Keep the faith  
Lord we've got to keep the faith 

"I don't want to come between you and your god."

He hangs around her neck a totem of Serpent, and calls it a totem of Coyote. She wants to tell him - to correct him - but it's not important. It's not even necessarily a distinction that should be made. She forgets quickly about the raven around her neck, although subconsciously she keeps it safe from harm. She hardly needs that symbol when it is burnt into her heart.

\---

_Tell me baby when I hurt you  
Do you keep it all inside_

_Love,_ she thinks, as she overhears the inane chatter at the bar, _is not a thing good or a thing bad in itself. Love, itself, is not the 'best feeling in the world'. Love is an amplifier. Love makes everything else more. More intense. More meaningful. When your lover gives you joy, it is the best thing in the world. When your lover hurts you..._

She takes a moment to compose herself, as people have started to look over at the young wemic at the bar nursing her drink and choking back tears.

_When your lover hurts you, it's the worst._

\---

_Do you tell me all's forgiven  
And just hide behind your pride_

"It's... it's okay."

She is lifted out of the ocean by some monstrous creature, some great sea leviathan which drags her up from the roiling sea and sends her crashing against the rocks, and she is winded, she hasn't the air to scream... and then there is a voice breaking through the terror, a voice she knows, and she knows that she will weather this storm.

"Just... be gentle. Remember. Be gentle."

The rocks are a whitewashed wall, and the monster is her monster, and she rides on the wings of ecstacy out of the dark ocean and back into the world of the living. _Her monster._ Afterwards he explains, and she nods, because it is so right, it is what she is here for, it is what she was made for. And she holds his hand and makes a promise.

\---

_Everybody needs somebody to love  
(mother, father)_

"So how was he?"

She looked embarrassed. How could she tell them, these people? They wouldn't know subtle if it hit them over the head with a bag of catamite and dragged them off to its lair. And the poor little wemic they'd sent her needed care and attention, not to be used up and thrown away.

"Aww, she's shy!"

She instantly recognised the substance that he produced from his bag, not least because she'd been trying to steal the stuff from Jason James for most of the previous weekend.

"I'll not have a follower of mine be nervous about that kind of thing," he informed her. "Drink up."

With the new confidence flowing through her veins, she told them everything, as well as she could. Told them how she'd taught him to look at her, how he'd held her bow and their hilarious attempt to string the wretched thing, how his eyes were beautiful and how he was, indeed, fabulously well trained in the arts of love.

They didn't need to know the things she didn't tell them.

\---

_Everybody needs somebody to hate  
(please don't leave me)_

She sat in the corner of the tent and looked up at them, as they smiled and greeted those who had taken her in for the night, as she felt herself search around for her things and get up to greet them. There wasn't any volition in the matter, or none she could discern at any rate. She knew she would go home with them, because what else was there to do?

They called her a silly kitten, and they didn't kill her, and the wemic that she rescued was alive and well to serve them dinner. She asked the girl not to spit in their food, if she'd mind awfully, and refused all talk of a reward for saving her from the food stall's owner. It was just one of those things that happened, one of those things that was done.

\---

_Everybody's bleeding  
cause the times are tough_

"He's not bleeding, he'll be fine."

A chorus of laughter at her perfunctory inspection of the stupid prick in question showed he'd won no friends from his performance this weekend.

*stab* went the knife. "Now he's bleeding," rumbled Dirge, walking off and handing the weapon back to its rightful owner.

"Gee, thanks," muttered Jessily, snatching the tools from her belt and dropping to the ground beside the bloodied would-be corpse. That Malathian girl she'd taught how to do this stuff came over to give her a hand or to watch or to get in the way or something, so Jessily gave her some borderline useful things to do while she tried to get through all the layers of clothing - why did injured people always have so much *clothing* over where she wanted to get to? She supposed she should be thankful that this one wasn't encased in hard metal armour - and save the gentleman's life, however little he deserved it.

"He'd better not die," said some other bastard from the same stable of disreputable bastards, and if she'd still been on the Seraph's she'd have looked up at him and said something like, "Well he wouldn't if you didn't keep interrupting the surgeon, dumbfuck," but she was herself and she just calmly kept on sewing and holding and redirecting the blood away from the wound while he ranted something about killing her and all she held dear.

She did think, for a moment, about killing him. It'd be so easy from down here, with the threatening man gone to laugh and joke about something unbearable crude with his associates, Grace's trusting hands wherever she asked her to put them. She probably wouldn't even die for it. Whoever got in Dirge's way would.

But they were important allies, and the state was more important than her petty personal grievances, and so she put him back together and let Magdalene wake him up.

\---

_Well it's hard to be strong  
When there's no one to dream on_

The disappointment in his calm, wide, beautiful eyes was almost too much for her to take.

"Have I done something wrong?"

He looked down at the floor again, like when she'd first met him, like nothing had happened between them, and she felt her heart rend painfully in two.

"If I've done something wrong, please, you can tell me..."

She reached out a hand, took his chin, pulled up his head so that he would look at her.

"This isn't about you, Keybo. This isn't something you've done wrong. It's something I've done... that I had to do..."

Kibos flinches from her sorrowful gaze, looking anywhere but into her eyes.

"Then I'm no longer required?"

"You can stay," she reassured him. "I want you to stay. I'm glad to have you. I just can't... can't..."

"It's okay." He was looking at her again, levelly, unconsciously seductive but only around the edges. "I understand. I will be your servant."

"Oh, Keybo," she said. "You're not my servant. You're my friend."

"Whatever you say, mistress," he replied, and she couldn't quite tell if he was serious or he was joking.

\---

_Faith: you know you're gonna live thru the rain  
Lord we've got to keep the faith_

She ran silent through the darkness, not looking back, scanning the crowd for him. She knew he wasn't to be disturbed while he was at the Flembic camp, but this wasn't some frivolous request.

"Dirge, Dirge!" she called with increasing desperation in her tone as she saw him walking between two tents in a cloud of Flembic dresses and fluttering Flembic ladies.

He looked around in surprise. "What is it, kitten?" he asked with concern. He knew she wouldn't interrupt him here for trivial matters.

"They're..." The words died in her throat as she mentally counted the onlookers. "I have to talk to you. Somewhere more private. Right now."

He broke ranks with the Flembic ladies immediately, ignoring their nervous approbation. "Let's go."

They were well into the no-man's land between camps before she continued. "No further," she warned. "It's not safe out here. They're done waiting."

"The Rainbows?" he asked. She nodded, compulsively watching the shadows, shaking like a leaf.

"They're going for Priest right now," she said. "Then they'll come for you."

_Don't you know it's never too late  
Right now we've got to keep the faith_

She falls to her knees beside him as they circle around the downed undead, who lies there leaking the last of his essence into the mud. She falls to her knees and she voices her grief and in that moment she does not care who hears, does not care what might happen next.

"I loved you," she wails, "I loved you and I would have loved you forever, do you hear me? I should have been the one to anchor you, not that weasel who sold you out. I was stupid and I didn't learn and now I'm going to lose you and oh, oh, oh..."

She can't speak any more through the tears, but she doesn't need to as she buries her head in his ruined fur and clings to him until there is nothing left.

_Faith: don't let your love turn to hate_  
Lord we've got to  
Keep the faith  
Keep the faith  
Keep the faith  
Lord we got to keep the faith 

She walks the dusty plains alone, chanting praises to an empty sky.

Secured to her wrist by a leather cord, the skull in her right hand, her free hand, feels heavy at her side. There is no good way to carry a skull in your hands. She shifts the weight of it, awkwardly, from time to time. The New World can be a place of sudden danger. She has no idea whether the cord would hold in a fight, but she thought she ought to make at least a token effort.

She cannot bear not to have her hands free, and by the gods, she would be glad to be shot of that wretched skull.

\---

_I've been walking in the footsteps_  
Of society's lies  
I don't like what I see no more  
Sometimes I wish I was blind 

She tries to write, but it's no use. All her words have been wrung out of her by that wretched skull. Sometimes she throws her pen at Kibos. He's always so bloody passive. He doesn't even flinch. He just calmly picks it up again and brings it back to her.

Dirge would at least defend himself if she threw something at him, she reckoned. Probably bat it straight out of the air, whoomph, drive it into the ground and spin round to see what was happening. Not that he'd notice if she hit his backplate with a pen.

There can't be that much for Kibos to do out here. It should be driving him up the wall. But he just sits there, or endlessly tidies things, or he looks at her for hours on end while she's trying to disentangle her mane or eat the food he's prepared or go to sleep.

At least there aren't any other people in Profanity East, unless you count the work crew, which Jessily doesn't, as they're all the way over on the building site and nobody seems to want her in the vicinity. Freeport was a nightmare after the quiet solitude of the swamps.

If only Kibos would stop staring at her, or would do something just for himself for a change. She can't work out what it is he _wants_, except what she can't give him.

\---

_Sometimes I wait forever  
To stand out in the rain_

Five minutes, he'd said. She was sure it had been more than that. In a clump, then two by two, then one by one, the others had left the tavern, leaving her feeling exposed in the candlelight. Lazy Unicorn was there, and Amelie, but they were hardly soldiers.

She hadn't noticed as the last few had trickled out into the night, or she'd have gone with them. She'd been too busy being a maudlin drunk, gazing at the claw on her arm, on the new addition to her body which already felt so much like a part of her.

It was when Horn broke the violin that it had come together, all those things she had been thinking just below the surface. All those things that came to mind every time she caught Canashir's eye. The puppet show. The little room with the fire. The ash on his hat.

He'd come to talk to her, just a little earlier in the evening, but she'd been distracted, she'd apologised for being egregiously drunk (what did they _put_ in that Schnapps?), she'd said nothing of particular merit, she couldn't even remember what he'd said.

It wasn't important any more. That was what the claw said. That was what the raven said. She had chosen her path. She could have chosen him - the violinist, the one who was a killer but not a monster. But that was not her path. She had chosen otherwise.

The claw showed her allegiance like a badge or a sash. Crude metal blocks where craftmanship was not required; cruel curved blades finely honed where it mattered. She was not allowed to be a monster yet - she had to keep feeling so the rest of them could see - but that was her path.

She saw Hame heading for the door, and picked herself up. If she was going to make a break for it, may as well pick a window where they'd have to split their targets. A hand on her sword, she headed out into the rain to find the other Rainbows and the rest of Havocstan.

\---

_So no one sees me cryin  
Trying to wash away this pain_

"It means learning from mistakes."

When she'd worried about how much it would hurt, she'd never thought it would hurt like *this*.

\---

_Mother father  
Everybody needs somebody to love_

I feel I should know you. But I don't, I really don't.

There's something behind those wide open eyes, that broad smile, those lips of yours. There's a desperation in your cheer, a frustration in your smile, a hunger you hide behind a biddable face. It isn't Horn's hunger. It isn't Violet's hunger. It's something else, something I haven't quite got a handle on yet.

You say you want the boy, offer it up as an excuse for your actions, but I don't think it's that, I don't think you'd know what to do with him if you got him. There's something else there, something deeper.

And when I find out what it is, I'll feed you, if I can.

But I think you need someone else, and I don't know how to get them for you.

\---

_There's things I've done I can't erase  
Everybody needs somebody to hate_

"Sometimes you can only save yourself."

He nods, as if he understands. The lady behind him on the chair tells us a ghost story I barely remember. She's very quiet, and I can barely hear her, so we move elsewhere.

There's alcohol, but we don't drink it. There's cheese, and biscuits, and as it drops cold he gives me his cloak to wear. We talk about faith, and honour, and standards, about homes and families.

At the end of the evening, I offer, and he considers it, but decides that he doesn't want to, not right now.

"Sometimes you can only save yourself."

I see him with Hame, and I pray for their happiness, and I hope that it will be enough.

\---

_Every night we fall from grace  
Everybody's bitching that they can't get enough_

"We're totally broke. I need ten marks in my hands by the end of the festival, or some unpleasant men are going to be asking questions about their loan."

There's quiet discussion on the way to the Cavalcade, along with the jokes about being led at a shuffling pace by an elderly gnoll with a stick.

"I'm afraid it might be mostly Elizabeth and Jessily's responsibility. Not much demand for guys like us."

I smile politely at them, but it feels like fading. It feels like sinking.

"I wrote some things..." I offer, trying to distract them from the subject.

\---

_It's hard with the world in your face  
Everybody needs_

She rises out of the circle, her brown hair straggling across her bleached face, the world new to her once more.

"I'm only slightly here," she apologised, holding out open palms, the claw bracer dangling uselessly in the air.

"Don't apologise," he told her sternly. "It isn't your fault."

"It pretty much was," she sighed. "If I hadn't been stupid, I wouldn't have gone off walking in the dark without a proper escort."

"I'm sure you had your reasons."

"I did. They hardly seem important any more, though." She looked around. "We'd better clear out of here before someone gets suspicious."

"You're going to have to tell them sometime, kitten," he warned her.

"Yeah. But, not right now, okay?"

"Okay." He turned to head off, pausing for a moment as she joined him at the edge of the circle and took his arm with her cold white arm, almost insubstantial. "Have you thought about what sort of form you might want?"

"You can tell me about them," she replied, "while you're taking me somewhere safe."

\---

_Trying to hold on, trying to hold on  
Everybody... Keep the faith..._

It is three hundred years since the closing of the Maelstrom trapped them on the side that was dearer to their hearts in any case, and a handful more since she was last alive.

Changes come and go, victories and defeats, the ebb and flow of politics and nations. There's scarcely anything one might recognise as Havocstan, but several successor states are doing more or less the same thing, and true slavery is increasingly rare, although serfs and indentured servitude and other such arrangements to do roughly the same are still widespread and common.

The gods seem to change their minds every week about what should be done with those who have ceased to live but remain bound to the world. Jessily doesn't have time to be concerned about such things any more. Curses and fanatics come and go, like all the exigencies of unlife.

Right now they need to finish assembling the great bone fleet, so that when the sorcerers unlock the secret of accelerating the Maelstrom's natural cycle, they are ready to ride the wave of magic out into the Old World and bring a wave of enlightenment crashing down on those far shores.

Dirge is out on campaign again. Containing the Things from the far south is practically a full time occupation for the armies, and Jessily hopes that the current proposed solution will not fail dramatically again this time, as the grand plan to invade the Old World could do with some of those armies.

This isn't heaven on earth yet. Every person does not have the tools and opportunities they need to carve out their life and make their own joy as they serve, in turn, the joy of others. But it's closer than it was, and she has plenty of time.


	19. Violations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drastically non-canon and where this story earns its E and most of the Choose Not To Warn. I am warning you about this fic. If there is a warning then it's probably applicable somewhere in it.

The badger awoke, rolled to his feet and snatched up his sword from the floor in one graceful motion. Some creature had invaded the sanctity of his plain house by the water-fall, some soft-footed creature that somehow had not awoken him until it had touched his clothing.

The darkness laughed, a high-pitched giggle, unearthly and somewhat forced. Then it spoke with the voice of a child. "Cower, little mortal." And Yoshikazu felt the cold grip of unnatural terror close around him, and fled despite his will away from the creature, whose form he could only dimly discern in the weak starlight that filtered into the room. What remained of his conscious mind berated him for fleeing in the direction the thing obviously desired, away from the room's door and a chance at actual escape, as the creature moved closer, an eerie purring echoing off the walls.

Swift as a shadow, the thing was before him, pulling the sword from limp fingers and sending it clattering to the ground. A clawed hand caught his chin and turned his muzzle up to face the apparition that had him cornered. A dark tongue licked pale lips as the creature's eyes, pools of darkness in a white-furred face, studied the mokosh eyes that fear was swiftly fading from. The other hand came around to the sharp-toothed mouth, settling from a grimace of fear into the stark lines of icey calm hatred, and smeared some dark cream across the gums in their last moment of vulnerability.

The fear he fell into then was deeper and more primal than the fear that had caused him to run, and he struggled wildly to escape, claws leaving deep rents in the creature who simply bubbled with delighted laughter as it fell upon him, pinning him to the floor as terror made his movements clumsy, shredding his robe with teeth and claws of its own, raking them ever so gently down his sides as its monsterous hindquarters descended towards him...

\----

The dracoscion slept lightly, behind several locked doors and multiple guardians, as befit a Mayan of her station. The creature had little time to waste after the first kill, dropping out of the shadows onto one of the three guards overlooking the well-lit wall containing the bedroom window. The others had to be dispatched in like fashion - one arm around the mouth, one slice across the throat, a surgeon's grace unerringly targetting the major arteries - and only three-quarters of the wall had been scaled, with claws sinking into the painted wood, when the alarm was given from one of the sentries paired with one of the dead.

As the creature scrambled in through the window, making little enough noise, the dracoscion proved that she was not unprepared for self-defence in her chamber, either. The knives whispered out from under the pillow, and the night was filled with the clangour of an alarm pull which also unlocked the first door. Leaping, the creature bore her to the ground and staked one wrist down with a thin dagger, whispering "Flee!" in the dracoscion's ear; the stake wouldn't hold for long, but the confusion of the fear gave the creature enough time to seriously inconvenience the onrushing guards with the dracoscion's own knife, and secure the door against further intrusions.

The dracoscion backed against the far corner, bleeding from the wrist and attempting to gauge through the fear whether leaping out of the window was actually a reasonable course of action at this point. Her hesitation proved to be her undoing as the ghastly undead thing caught her up, ramming her against the wall and shredding her nightclothes with one swift swipe of a clawed hand. Raguel struggled and kicked against the inexorable strength of the small wemic-like wraith pinning her to the wall with one hand around her throat, and her eyes widened as that other clawed hand which had removed her dignity began to quest around under the remains of her garments...

\----

"Sssh, little one."

The wemic surfaced from her dreams into that waking clarity which is immediately ready to process orders, but the room was still dark and the voice unfamiliar. Also, it gradually dawned on her, there was some kind of creature crouched spider-like over her sleeping form. She drew in breath to scream.

"I would really think twice about screaming, if I were you," it advised, and Ornament felt the unmistakeable coldness of a dagger against her delicate throat. She swallowed, awkwardly, and did indeed think again about that screaming plan. There would be guards in the corridor, if the creature hadn't somehow dispatched them all without sound, and if it could do so then it would not have to resort to psychological methods to keep her from screaming. Having one's throat slit would be unpleasant, but possibly no more so than whatever the creature had in mind for her otherwise, and it was likely that a medic would come to...

...was that its *tail* snaking a path up her leg? Both of the thing's ghastly clawed hands were pinning her shoulders, one also controlling the knife, and its lower legs were wrapped around hers to reduce the possibility of escape (and, she imagined with a shudder, with just a little repositioning ready to wrench her right in half with enough application of the easy strength it was displaying).

She opened her mouth to scream, but it was interrupted by a cold and cloying kiss.

It tasted of vinegar and death.

\----

The passage of time was hard to measure when you were securely bound to the wall of a building, with a shocking lack of windows or ventilation, hands shattered and legs twisted well out of working order. Constance Varas really hadn't been trying very hard, either, preferring to snatch some mockery of sleep from the silent hours before the torturers returned to resume their work.

About the last thing she had expected was that a white-furred, black-striped abomination, soul symbol brazenly on view for all to see, would slip in through the door and regard her with such frank lust in its cold, dead eyes.

Several of the soldiers had already had their way with her - as if such tawdry, mundane indignities would break her! - and she was hardly in the most attractive state she'd ever attained, but who knew what aroused the dark and depraved lusts of one who clung to this world past the time at which the gods should have claimed their soul? The creature looked from side to side and then directed a ghastly look of pity in her direction.

"Isn't it uncomfortable to sleep up there?" it crooned, further closing the distance between them. Constance did not dignify its obvious taunt with a reply; instead, she spat at the creature, her bloody spittle catching it satisfyingly in the chest.

It looked down at the spittle with quiet amusement. "I was hoping we might have a civilised conversation," it said with mock-regret in its honeyed tones. "But it seems that you aren't interested in such niceties as being taken down from the wall for the night."

"I have nothing to say to you, abomination," said the proud woman tied to the wall, incidentally contradicting her own statement as she said it.

"Very well, then," and without further ado it was upon her, sweeping aside the remains of her clothing with the swift fingers of one who has needed to get to the skin and wounds of those whose lives it had been trying to save, snuffling around her most private places with its cold, clammy maw.

She did not do it the service of screaming.

\----

He'd been following the apparition in the trees for some time, steady and silent, musket as ready as it could be without compromising his stealth. It was not until they were some way from the camp that it turned and looked directly at him, as if it had known he was there all along.

"Walker," it said, in familiar tones subtly warped and twisted by its new form.

It would probably have been prudent to run, but his first good look at the thing ignited his curiosity and damped down his natural caution. After all, it looked so much like her, and she had been harmless. Maybe it would even have some useful information for him.

"Jessily?" he asked, hardly daring to believe it.

"In a manner of speaking," it said, suddenly much closer than it had been, crossing the intervening distance like the shadow of a tree moving in the wind.

"I... I don't want to have to shoot you," he warned, although his voice was already faltering.

"Then don't," said the creature, stepping from the shadows to enfold him in her arms, incidentally pinning his musket to his side and entwining her other arm with his so that it could not draw even a knife.

"Jessily!" he exclaimed once more before the mouth came down over his, strange without the warmth of circulating blood. Then everything was struggling, squirming, and the fight gradually going out of him under the onslaught of surprising strength and even more surprising joy.

\----

It watched them, casually, as it laughed and joked with the knot of undead and Fallen who just happened to have staked out a place in the middle of the thoroughfare to stand around and talk. It watched as one went off to a meeting, as two went off to the market stalls, as Stuart accompanied some kind of important personage away. Then it and another went off a way, into a rather less trafficed copse, and the other ran back yelling for a surgeon.

"Yes, a surgeon," said Aestar to the initially skeptical Marshalls. "We're not always barbarians, you know. And do you really think the poor creature would entrust me with its true name so that I could heal it?"

The trap having been thus laid, did not go entirely to plan. Somehow Fiona had found another of her clan to dash out with her, a young man with a brace of pistols and twitchy fingers to match, and they stood at the edge of the trees and bade the wounded be brought out to them. The other licked its lips in anticipation and indicated that it would be quite happy with the young man, a course of action which the creature nodded its assent to as it dragged the bleeding wemic out of the bushes.

Engaging the young man in conversation as Fiona knelt beside the would-be corpse to work, Aestar skillfully distracted his attention and moved him subtly away from the surgery so that the creature could strike. Quietly whispering into the surgeon's ear, "and now for the chase," the creature took to its heels after the suddenly fleeing Fiona, who put on a surprising burst of speed over the dying wemic and straight on into the copse as the creature had predicted.

However, the paniced flight of the surgeon could never match the loping grace of the creature, who had taken good note of the copse's layout and was not fazed by the lashing branches as it ran the surgeon down. Bearing her to the ground, the creature tipped a vial of yellow liquid down its target's throat, and watched her carefully as with her frantic breathing she accidentally swallowed just enough for her muscles to begin to betray her.

"No need to struggle, my lovely," the creature reassured her, "it will all be over soon."

\----

Sword to sword, the creature faced off with the swashbuckler in the woods.

He was strong, and agile, and less fragile than it had hoped at first; blow for blow, he was certain to win this charade. Yet he was already leaking his life into the cold earth, from a deep cut to his side; it was only a matter of time if the creature could keep him here.

But it did not want him dead, merely subdued.

"My friends are all around us," the creature confidently stated. From the woods, strange eyes and otherworldly tentacles confirmed its words as true. "You cannot escape. Put down your sword and you may yet live."

"Never!" he asserted proudly, narrowly avoiding overcommitting himself on the easily voided blow which accompanied his assertion. "If I am to go down, I will go down fighting, and at least cost you and your despicable allies some mana, foul beast."

The creature nodded, and resumed fencing - just enough to keep his attention, as it gradually pulled him closer to the shadows in the trees. Pressing the advantage, he soon discovered the other half of her trap. Two shots rang out, planting a bullet neatly in each shoulder, and finally overwhelmed by his wounds he fell.

"You had better hope there is time enough for me to save you, de Winter," muttered the creature, pulling an incongrously mundane set of surgeon's tools from its belt. If it had wanted to have sex with a corpse, there were plenty of better candidates.

\----

"Hey."

The creature's voice was soft, almost friendly. The lady spun and emptied several pistols before drawing breath.

"There's no need to be like that," it scolded, brushing the bullets out of leaking holes and smiling sadly at its erstwhile friend. "You were going to be like this once, remember?"

"I was never going to be like you," she declared, drawing her sword and making ready to defend herself.

That was when the others fell on her from behind.

\----

"Hey, handsome."

The wemic spun around, but he held the blow that he had started swinging towards the creature when he saw the mark it bore upon its forehead.

"What do you want?" he growled.

"Oh, so you don't want me any more, huh?" smiled the creature. "I even brought you presents."

She opened her hands, revealing a small bottle of something syrupy and see-through, and a round black sweet.

"I don't want your presents, corpse." He kept both hands firmly on his clavate. "Go bother someone else."

"But sweetums, I've heard such things about you," crooned the creature, pocketing the drugs. "Just a little taste. You'll want it soon enough."

"I don't fuck corpses," he claimed, but he was watching the hand that was near the dagger and not the hand which had just come out of the left pocket, and with a casual gesture she reached forwards and spread a handful of dust across his lips as he finished his words.

"Ah-ah-ah," she purred, "I think you mean, 'I haven't fucked any corpses *yet*'."

He looked around in a sudden panic for exits, but the only way out was through her, and someone was lacing the tent door closed even as the mawkish dust began to hit his hindbrain and tell him that she was kind of like a female wemic, almost...

\----

Getting the drop on Helena had been pretty awkward. The bitch practically slept in her armour, she'd taken the tenet of never walking around on your own to heart, and the creature knew she'd be quite a match even if she wasn't armed and encased in her fine metal shell.

In the end, it had to settle for Aestar's seconds, after its partner in crime had spent weeks perfecting the form of Ansellina's shade and getting the voice just right to lure the General out of her tent on the pretext that she was dreaming, and that Ansellina's soul was somehow in peril.

Damn, but it was worth it, though. The dead bint had really taught that flint-hearted general something, and in a slight haze of various narcotics it seemed she was all too willing to believe that her old lover's happiness depended on how well she fucked a dead wemic...

\----

"So," said the creature at the end of a long night's drinking, "how about it?"

They'd been out on watch together, her and Violet, the only one of her old friends not to spurn her new incarnation. Much as Violet believed quite strongly that her friend belonged in the grave and in the halls of the Jaguar rather than roaming the world in the way it did, there was a certain kinship there, a shared interest if you will.

It was strange, then, that the creature had never made this proposal before, but even Violet's appraising grin was somewhat nervous. "Don't feel up to it?" the creature taunted her. "Don't think you can match up to some of my conquests?"

"Never!" declared Violet, planting a fierce kiss on the cold, dead mouth, revelling in the surprisingly gentle touch of the clawed hands warmed only by the heat of the fire.

\----

The circle of the depraved stepped out of the shadows of the deserted marketplace around her.

"Taken a wrong turning, have we?" the creature taunted her.

"Detail!" she yelled, noticing too late that her partner wasn't just dallying in his usual distracted fashion, but instead cut off from her by grinning demons.

"I hear he's answering some questions of his own," the creature purred. "So tell us, sweet cheeks, just how much do you want to live?"

Amelia drew a pistol, which was not enough firepower and rather belated. A simple hiss sent her screaming into the night, running from apparition to nightmare until she stumbled exhausted to the ground and was pinned by her original interlocuter.

"Are you ready to have a little talk?" it asked as she calmed down from her last dose of supernatural terror.

"Let me go!" she demanded fruitlessly. "What kind of monster are you? Let me go!"

"Why," said the creature, "I'm the _fun_ kind of monster."

From the shadows, tentacles wrapped around Amelia's wrists and ankles, as the creature prepared to demonstrate just how much fun you can have when you really, really don't want to.


	20. "Havocstan, form up!"

_I'm alive my friend_

The trees were still trees. The shrines were more bearable than they'd been before. She'd never felt so alive. Like she knew that she needed to make the most of every moment, that she would need every memory she could form of this to keep her through the cold dark night to come.

_I can feel the shadows everywhere_

There was something in the air, even before it went down. Thinking of meetings and times, angels and supplications, she turned to see a growing crowd of... onlookers?

"Havocstan, form up!"

Stay calm. Look to your points. Horn, checking his blades. Emile, with that pathetic wood axe. Priest, organising the safety of his civilians.

"Light Infantry, form up!"

There are more of them when she looks back up. Where are our shields? Where is our front line? She tries to find her place in the line, but it is hopeless, and she goes back to Horn. Maybe if she sticks to him, she can pick him up when he goes down.

Then they charge.

Stumbling on feet that haven't slept, haven't slept, she watches the line tear into chaos, watches the line dissolve into invisible defeat, raging against the dying of the light. She tries to find a body, but everyone here is just hesitating, like her.

"Retreat!"

She needs no more encouragement. In a hail of gunfire that shreds her armour, she turns and runs.

_I'm alive_

She dithers over giving the downed man her potion, but the battle... the battle somehow isn't over yet. They're still fighting out there, and he's ready to get up and give it another go. She's a stranger to him, but he takes it anyway, and scrambles back to his feet with his sword in his hand.

She checks over the other, but there's nothing she can do for him, he's not dying and he says he's not a fighter.

Looking out across the field. She could go back in. She could drag someone out. She could save a few. But she knows that her identity is painted across her face and she doesn't know that she would get back out again. 

And she doesn't want to die. She still doesn't want to die. Not yet.

_I left the shadows far behind me_

"Priest is dead. Dirge isn't coming back."

Look to your points. That's Stefano Amici, you met him in Freeport six months and a lifetime ago. That's Rh'ak Amici. That's Dandy, he probably wants to kill you.

Speculation. Contingencies. "We're leaving."

Ricardo comes back with the hat of one of the Sky Pony. She's glad, in that vague faraway sense that she feels anything, that she picked him up off the floor.

She downs the glass of port she is offered.

"I'm going to eat my dinner. I'm going to drink my gin. Then, it will be time for the red wine. Then it will be dark."

She paces from room to room. She looks out of the window. They make a back door. The one with the eyes wanders in and out. The ladies talk about how they will keep the family safe.

"They're going from camp to camp, looking for the undead, the necromancers."

"We're not going anywhere. I'm going to eat my dinner. I'm going to drink my gin. Then, it will be time for the red wine. Then it will be dark."

She looks out of the window. It's a balance. She needs to see. She needs to remain unseen.

"HAVOCSTAN!"

She heads out into the night. Keep swimming. Mardocai's there. They wait, in the lengthening shadows, until he is gone.

_Another one is waiting in the dark_

"Bess!"

She's the first one that she sees, the first one that she can identify.

"It's over, Jessily. It's over."

"I'm alive. You're alive. It isn't over." 

There's Jason James, face white as snow and still at the point of breaking. There's Jocelyn. There's Emile!

There's a list and she demands to look at it. A list of the ones who made it out. A list of the ones who were alive.

As they see her, as they add her to the list - their faces brighten and they hold her, and finally she can begin to cry.


	21. Ongoing Impressions, pt3

"No, Glaive, I just like tormenting you."

I'd never thought to see Ima in a kitchen, but she keeps the camp running with a smile on her face, and her food kept me going when I was dead on my feet and running against the wind.

I want to see inside her and know what makes her smile that sad smile. I want to open up that incisive mind and get her to look at the things that I care about. I want to be there for her, to watch her banter and to keep her safe through the darkness.

Oh, Ima, come home. Come home. I will keep you safe, if it is in my power.

\----

There is more to you, Unas. Or I suppose I should say that there was. I still can't see what it was, but when you broke bread with Sha I could feel it. I can't spare it much thought, though. It's the living who need me, not the dead.

But I kind of wish I knew where you've gone.

\----

"And Flip and Sas are with them."

I missed your wedding. It was cruel and unforgivable, and I am certain you noticed, because you looked at me as I ran up to the end of it and you are smarter than you look. I missed your wedding because I was listening to the angels. 

I wanted to be there, because I will have forever to listen to the angels, and only one chance to be at your wedding, but I was impatient for knowledge and there was none to be found there that another wouldn't tell me.

I missed your wedding, and I haven't spoken to you since.

\----

"Do you follow the Soldier?"

I want to pick her up, carry her away, save her from the world. I want to tell her to get out of here before it is too late. But I do none of these things. I smile when the General makes her look up. I talk to her when I can. Hagar reminds me of Kibos, in a way. The way she always looks at the ground. The sideways glances with those wide, shining eyes.

But I see her on a plank of wood, on a dangerous sea, with the gunshots in the distance. And I pray to anyone who will listen that I do not have to take that from her, that I do not have to push her into the hungry waves and watch them devour her.

\----

"I thought our tent was going to be used more for hospitality, you see, and..."

I just couldn't connect with Sha, this festival. Too much in the background, while so many people were trying to be in my foreground. I tried to help, but her life is so different to mine.

"And the kittens? What about the kittens?"

I never asked who'd picked up the kittens, I barely registered it when I saw them again. I know that she does magic, I'm sure there's something under there, but it's buried so deep and I don't have time to draw it out.

\----

"They went charging off into the middle of it. I think they're dead."

Now I'll never know who you were, Lis. Now I'll never know what you wanted. I'm glad you got your chance with your pretty boy, I'm glad your last night was by all reports fantastic. I'm sure you were high on flame and exulting in the slaughter.

I don't want to be glad that you're gone. I don't want to be glad that it makes my life easier, probably more than it makes it harder. You deserve to be mourned. You deserve to be missed. You deserve to be another empty space in my heart where once a person lived.

\---

"I suppose, to you, I lack a certain decorum myself."

Turns out I'd had the wrong wemic down as Melei. This one is mostly white, although with a similar awkwardness around me as a young, armed and armoured female with my mane freely flowing and not hidden beneath a scarf. 

He's very polite, and not terribly distant, and I think he's beginning to understand which parts of his discomfort are true morality that he believes he should hold to, and which parts are irrelevant tradition that will ultimately prove transient in such a place as this.

I am glad when he comes back with Hagar, and when he listens to the angel and heads off to the Glorious Hammer. I am glad that he is alive. I am glad that he has his faith. I am glad that he did not usher me or her away.

\---

"What are you more scared of?" "Horn."

I will not be glad that he is dead. What I have won is a hollow victory, however I wanted it a few short months ago. It is no consolation that he has gone the way that he wanted, to the place that he wanted. I will not be glad that he is dead.

I never had a family before the Rainbows. I never had a father before he adopted me. All children outgrow their fathers, and few repay them for their efforts. I wish I could have told him. I wish I could have explained, even knowing that he would never understand.

May the Jaguar always go with you, Horn. May your joy in slaughter in his halls know no equal.

\----

I have no space in my mind left for you, Walker. You did not deserve your death and I cannot imagine that you went gladly. Scarcely beginning to find your feet, to live your own life, to discover who you really were. To come out of your shell, to open your eyes, to find your joy.

You had come to us for protection when your world fell apart and we failed you. And I cannot let myself feel it, for fear that I might break. You came to us for protection and I failed you. I tried so hard, but I failed you. 

I didn't even look for you in the crowd. I didn't even look for you. If I had gone back for you, I might be dead, it is true, but you might have still been alive.


	22. The Drinking Incident

_Remember all the times that we used to play?  
You were lost and I would save you  
I don't think those feelings will ever fade  
You were born a part of me  
I was never good at hiding anything  
My thoughts break me  
Do you understand what you mean to me?  
You are my faith_

They pass the drinks around the circle, the drinks and the Oco and the Rhind. She leans away from the fire and keeps passing, pressing the bottles into the hands of the oco fiends on either side of her. She cannot afford to be inebriated, does not want to see the visions that dance across the edges of her vision. Not tonight. Not tonight.

Anxiously she checks the time. They plan to go to Novak's, to go to the hotel. She slips into the darkness for a moment. Walker needs to know where she'll be.

As the time goes by, the laughter gets harder, the loud faces in the firelight get more distant from the world as it is inside her head. If only they could see. If only they could know. If only she could tell them. A warm goblet of honey vodka is pressed into her hands. It smells divine. She passes it on. She cannot afford to be inebriated. Not tonight.

They discuss the traditions of Mill'en. In a circle, they give advice to the bride-to-be. Jessily listens, and then she adds, very simply: "Keep swimming."

The time is getting close. She half-carries Lilith into the Daggers to fetch what the party needs, but they can't find it in the dark. Then Ironface is there and they're talking, and some of the hens are walking off, and they're strung out across the field laughing and holding each other as she scans the darkness for incoming hostiles.

As they all pile into the hotel, she waits a moment with Ima, the other girl breathing smoke into the dark skies. She's just about done when Emile happens by, which is unfortunate for him.

It is bright and warm in the hotel bar, as she blocks the door for laughter's sake, as the haze of the drug-addled rises around them. It is bright and warm, and for just a moment she might stay here, she might take Emile and leave the past behind her, but then they are out again into the night and there's something about Nefer and in the confusion there is her chance. She puts up the hood of her cloak and strides into the night.

 _Look confident,_ she tells herself. _Your cloak is on, your hood is up, your mane is tucked in. You're just another anonymous shape in the dark, and you know where you are going._

She hesitated by one tent, but it was in the wrong position, and she headed on to the landmarks she had memorised and ducked into the darkened interior of the place she had been told to come. It was five past eleven and it was empty. She looked at the things kept within, as well as she could. It must be here. This must be the place. She dragged a chair out of sight of the opening and sat in the darkness, cloak covering all identifiable shapes, hand on her sword, hand on her dagger. If they were coming to kill her, she would go down fighting.

\---

_When I sit and think of the days we shared  
and the nights you covered for me  
Every little thing that I ever did  
You would stand by me  
Every time you cried it would take my wind  
My heart would break  
If I can be strong like you were for me  
You are my faith_

"His life is in your hands, as yours is in his."

Her weapons lay scattered at the other end of the tent, save for her claw, which they had made her retain.

Through the long dark night she held his hand, startling awake every time she heard his breath catch in his throat.

Oh gods, when the battle sounds filtered in from outside, when she had to wrestle him to the ground and make him drop her weapons, when the clumsy and the thoughtless and the misinformed came past and made her deal with them...

...but in the morning the sun rose, and she still lived, and he still moved under his own power.

\---

_Hear me scream  
Can you hear me scream?_

"I will not leave his side."

The world surreal in the morning light. Nothing would ever be the same.

I will die, she thinks, holding him afterwards. I will die, one day, and I do not think I will have your courage.


	23. The Morning After

He stands behind the bar, looking for the teabags, putting the water on the stove.

She smiles sadly at him. _Still swimming._ She is alive. He is alive. In some ways, things are better now.

"And in the morning," she says, glancing out at the remnant gathered in the camp, "the sun came out."


	24. Writing Letters

Pencil. Paper.

All she has left is the watch schedule, and her notes. She doesn't want to touch the latter, so she looks at the back of the former doubtfully, takes out a pencil, drops to the ground and lays the paper carefully across the claw. It's the smoothest writing surface she can find out here. Nostalgia for rooms in inns, flat tables and the tops of chests of drawers, flickers through her mind, but she pushes it away.

Small. Neat. Only what needs to be said right now. She can get there in person later, she hopes.

The ophidian hangs around nervously, shifting from foot to foot, as she scribbles. She wishes vaguely for some sealing wax, but she doesn't have anything to melt it with, either. Considers drawing some kind of pattern across the fold, but rejects it as stupid. Anyone she'd send the letter with from around here would be smart enough to refold it exactly if they wanted to look inside.

It's not like it's a secret from anyone except the people she's trying to inform.

She wishes she'd kept the little brown wemic around. She could have trusted him not to open her letters, she thinks, or at least not to know who might have wanted to read them. But she'd sent him off to the Vale, and anyway, she wouldn't have wanted to send him where these letters were going. Better that some anonymous snake take them, someone they had no reason to harm, someone they had no reason to suppose she cared for.

There's not much left of the schedule when she's done. 

She hopes that one of the places she'll be visiting soon will have some more paper. There's so much more left to say, so much more left to write. Not quite so urgent, perhaps, but certainly before the season gets underway. She packs the scrap of paper remaining back into her pack, hands over the letters with some brief instructions, and heads onwards to her first appointment.


	25. Haunting

She woke gently, careful not to stir, as she sensed someone present in the room with her. A shortish figure, breathing but very softly, as if they'd had practice at this kind of thing. Frustratingly she was on the wrong side to look at the figure under lidded eyes, so when it continued to make no sudden movements she rolled over sleepily, continuing to attempt to feign slumber.

"You're awake, then."

The voice was gently amused, and horribly familiar. She opened her eyes slowly, not wanting to believe it. But there he was.

Her eyes flicked immediately to his forehead. Nothing there. But there was something not quite solid about him which meant she didn't think for a moment that he'd got away. So either he had a theurge too, or... or he wasn't really there.

She sat up, quiet as she could, holding the bedclothes around her against the cold damp chill of the air.

"Go away," she said, simply, locking eyes with his. Putting on that expression that she thought of as fierce but probably turned out more like 'petulant'.

"But, kitten," he said - _it wasn't him, he never called her kitten_ \- "didn't you want me to save you?"

"No." She couldn't hold his gaze. She looked at her feet. "I don't think anything can save me," she added, in a small voice on the edge of tears.

When she looked up, he was gone.


	26. Walker's Wake

And in the morning, they gathered wood from the forest, and gathered the various preparations of rhind together. 

And they built a great pyre, there in the clearing outside the camp, where the damp and verdant jungle canopy gave way just a little to glorious sunshine on clean, mossy grass. 

And onto the pyre they loaded Walker's body, as the mourners and well-wishers straggled in throughout the day, escorted by the ophidians who owned this valley.

And there was alcohol, and there were other intoxicants, and there was good food and good company. People sang, people gathered in groups to talk, people tended to and fussed with the pyre. Food was prepared and eaten. The evening drew in.

The pyre was lit so that it would burn throughout the night, wafting the sweet rhind-smoke through the gathering of revellers, so that their singing merged with the song of the drug and they shared visions and dreams with their drinking and laughter. There were spontaneous outbreaks of dancing; some couples and groups retreated to the nearby tents and some were less private in their affections.

A lonely figure sat at the edge of the camp, occasionally smiling at passers-by and reassuring them that no, she was okay, indulging them with a moment of banter or a few earnest words. Out here there was only the faintest chime of music on the air.

She wasn't ready for the visions that the rhind-smoke might give her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.


	27. Dreams Are Not Visions

Kibos would have thought to bring a tent. Hells, that other guy who'd shown up would probably have thought to bring a tent.

Jessily hadn't thought to bring a tent. The Onontakha were carrying practical things like tents, right? Except she'd left them behind to hike into places they didn't feel welcome, and naturally they'd got bored and wandered off some time ago. And she'd sent Kibos to safety and the new guy to carry letters and gather news.

The ground was cold, and the warmth she'd horded in her cloak from the night's walk sank quickly into it without a trace, but she was too exhausted to take another step before at least attempting to get some sleep.

\----

Most of her nightmares start with drowning. It's become practically comforting, really. As she kicks and struggles and gasps burning salt water into her lungs, she wonders with the detachment of the dreamer where this one is going to go next. Is it going to be the one where she is dead and her soul drifts off into the endless hungry void, full of barely describable creatures which endlessly rend her apart? Or maybe it will settle down into something more mundane. Maybe it's the one about the kittens again.

The sea coalesces, without apparent transition, into an all-too-familiar room. Spotless wooden floor, the oaken walls with their hangings, her eyes firmly on her feet as she holds her position, waiting for the dance to begin. She doesn't need to look up. The presence of the dragon is unmistakeable. It hangs heavy in the air, along with a faint wisp of rhind and a heavier swirl of other incenses, and the dream provides her with a ghost of the old love once more. Surely nothing could be more beautiful than the dragon? Surely nothing could surpass the tender care she showed her charges?

The dance begins, and she realises that it isn't the dragon sitting on the throne. It isn't the dragon that she sees out of the corner of her eyes as she turns and spins and tumbles through her assigned routine. It's _him_. And the other dancers, they aren't the golden-furred wemics that her dragon so prized, they aren't the people of her homeland at all. They have the same expressions as she believes she wears - the glazed smile of practiced concentration, of trying to make it look easy, and behind it the waking mind biting down on mounting horror - but they are not her.

They are his other lovers.

She twirls and skips, and as she dances her attire changes, as does the attire of some of the other dancers - the dress is replaced by a skirt and then by trousers, weapons attach themselves to her belt, armour covers her limbs and replaces her blouse, and finally the claw and the necklace fall into place, and still she dances. The finale approaches, and as the dancers fall into line, she executes what would be a perfect curtsey if she still had a skirt to curtsey with, and finally she manages to look into his eyes.

They are loving, if you look at it in the right way, but distant. Like the dragon's. And they gaze on all the dancers with equal passion and equal detatchment.

\----

The scream woke her and the birds, but appeared to alert no more dangerous creature to her presence, as she shivered awake in the morning chill. Stiff and uncomfortable in the glare of the morning sun, she shook the worst of the dew from where it had settled. She tried to remember the trail markers, squinting through the trees to spot where the locals had left a route for her to follow. Hopefully with another day's walk, she'd be back among friends, where a decent place to sleep would be hers for the asking.

She moves like a shadow through the forest to the road. It's bright and cold, and from time to time people pass her in the other direction. There are people dragging handcarts of their produce to market, or returning with the spoils of such a journey. There are couriers jogging with their messages. There are workers out travelling to their workplace, and others heading out or back with snares and slingshots, looking for small game. There are individuals hurrying on nameless errands she cannot easily place from their equipment or demeanour. Maybe they are visiting family. Maybe they are running from something. Maybe they are hoping there will be work in another place. Maybe they are heading for a port to leave this land forever.

As she walks, the dream fades into a slight unease at the back of her mind. She reminds herself that she is certain, that her confidence is not misplaced, that dreams are not visions and the mind often makes bad connections when so exhausted in such an inconvenient place to sleep. She sees or hallucinates a grass-snake in the tall grasses by the side of the road, and distinctly hallucinates that it is mocking her.

The races change as she moves through the territories. Humans are almost everywhere, but wemics take over as the majority as she gets closer to her destination. After the third set of defensive clustering and mutterings, wide eyes and accusing looks, she steps off the road and heads cross-country through the fields and plains, knowing she only has to find the coast and follow it. She is alert for any trouble that the local populace might decide to cause her, but they are not stupid and nobody is going anywhere near the brazen armoured girl-wemic with the dagger and the claw blades, even if she is walking through their garden.

Finally the signs of civilisation thin out once more, and she can hear the coast birds as she picks up the trail to the place she is going. It feels like home. It feels like fading. Later, she tries to write a letter, and after wasting half of her small nub of pencil eraser she gives up and leaves it as terse as the others.

She wishes that she could see him again. She wishes it wasn't so complicated.


	28. Communication

The young wemic woke alone, cursing herself for falling asleep. Last time she'd done this, they'd gone through her bag. This time she couldn't even remember what was meant to be in the stash of leaves, pots of cream and little bottles. It all looked undisturbed. She picked herself up and ran her fingers through her mane. She'd left her cloak somewhere again. So much for always carrying everything with you.

She had a cursory look around before she headed out, and was reunited with her cloak - appropriately - in the guildhouse's cloak room, but if she was being honest she couldn't tell bear tracks from mameluk cavalry, let alone one pair of booted feet from another by their indentations in the soft ground. She entertained fanciful ideas of methods of communication: scraps of cloth tied to trees, claw marks sliced into wood, casual arrangements of twigs on the ground. But the problem was, in order to communicate, first you had to communicate, and she hadn't been very good at that lately, not at all.

Even Jason had woken earlier and abandoned her. The journey must have tired her out more than she'd thought, that or the lessons. She searched for a mirror, wondering if it would be worth carrying one around with her. Certainly if she expected to be using the headscarf more often. Some kind soul eventually lent her one. It was getting easier with practice. She thought of the other wemics with their headscarves, and wondered idly if a fringe could conceal a soul symbol adequately. Most of them wore them up above their foreheads to make it clear that they were hiding nothing, but some of them were tied lower. She tied her headscarf low, and opaque just above her eyes. It didn't really cover much of her hair, but neither did Ima's and it was only when it started to fall down backwards that the others had complained.

The coast was well-travelled and rather civilised in most places, but she couldn't quite concentrate on the letter until she was safely back in the Vale. The pristine notepaper that she had faithfully carried in her bag was now marred with several false starts and a couple of draft paragraphs that she didn't mind the look of too badly, and she bought some more from the market for the final draft, using the remainder of the workings to lay fires and keep the cabin warm.

She just hoped that she would get a reply before the festival, and maybe this time a letter would solve problems, rather than just creating them.


	29. The Tempest, with added Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon. Based on the wikipedia summary of The Tempest.

The magician Priest, founder of Lamentation, and his facet protegee, Genevieve, have been stranded for twelve years on Coyote Island after Priest's jealous compatriot Justice — helped by Benedict, the Comte of Mill'en — deposed him and set him adrift with the then three-year-old Genevieve. Gossard, the Comte's cardinal, had secretly supplied their boat with plenty of food, water, clothes and the most-prized scrolls from Priest's library. Possessed of magic powers due to his great learning, Priest is reluctantly served by a spirit, Aestar, whom Priest had rescued from a bangle in which she had been trapped by the Rukhi theurge Alamandra. Priest maintains Aestar's loyalty by repeatedly promising to release the "airy spirit" from servitude. Alamandra had been banished to this island, and had died before Priest's arrival. Her son, Glaive, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Priest, was initially adopted and raised by him. He taught Priest how to survive on the island, while Priest and Genevieve taught Glaive religion and their own dialect. Following Glaive's attempted rape of Genevieve, he had been compelled by Priest to serve as the sorcerer's slave, carrying wood and gathering berries and "pig nuts" (acorns). Glaive, provoked by the comeliness of Genevieve, has proposed to her that they join in sexual union in order to create a new race to populate the island. In slavery, Glaive has come to view Priest as a usurper and has grown to resent him and his 'daughter'. Priest and Genevieve in turn view Glaive with contempt and disgust.

The play opens as Priest, having divined that his compatriot, Justice, is on a ship passing close by the island, has raised a tempest which causes the ship to run aground. Also on the ship are Justice's friend and fellow conspirator, Comte Benedict of Mill'en, the Comte's ward and her protegee (Ansellina and Gaelle), and Benedict's cardinal, Gossard. All these passengers are returning from the wedding of Justice's protegee Alexis with the King of Flambard. Priest, by his spells, contrives to separate the survivors of the wreck into several groups. Benedict and Ansellina are separated and believe one another to be dead.

Three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Glaive falls in with Stephano and Valentin, two drunkards, whom he believes to have come from the moon. They attempt to raise a rebellion against Priest, which ultimately fails. In another, Priest works to establish a romantic relationship between Ansellina and Genevieve; the two fall immediately in love, but Preist worries that "too light winning [may] make the prize light", and compels Ansellina to become his servant, pretending that he regards her as a spy. In the third subplot, Justice and Gaelle conspire to kill Benedict and Gossard so that Ansellina can become Regent. They are thwarted by Aestar, at Priest's command. Aestar appears to the "three conspiritors of sin" (Justice, Benedict and Gaelle) as a harpy, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Priest. Priest manipulates the course of his enemies' path through the island, drawing them closer and closer to him.

In the conclusion, all the main characters are brought together before Priest, who forgives Benedict. He also forgives Justice and Gaelle, but warns them against further betrayal. Aestar is charged to prepare the proper sailing weather to guide Justice and his entourage (including Priest himself and Genevieve) back to the Mill'en fleet and then to Flambard, where Ansellina and Genevieve will be married. After discharging this task, Aestar will finally be free. Priest pardons Glaive, who is sent to prepare Priest's cell, to which Benedict and his party are invited for a final night before their departure. Priest indicates that he intends to entertain them with the story of his life on the island. Priest has resolved to break and bury his staff, and "drown" his book of magic, and in his epilogue, shorn of his magic powers, he invites the audience to set him free from the island with their applause.


	30. After The End

"Aren't you my escort?"

She watched Lilith and Emile go into the night, made poor jokes about their survival chances. Already that night they had possibly only passed danger unscathed because she had made her silhouette obvious, been recognised.

"Dirge is in camp. He wants to speak to you."

She barely notices her friend's escort. The lady bringing the message is so much larger than life this season, and there is an awful compassion in her eyes that does not calm the endless stream of speculation in Jessily's mind.

"Walk! Piper is _right there_ , Dirge."

She can't help but run straight up to him and her hands start to move of their own accord to cling to him, but she sees behind him that Piper's face is twisted in a mask of hatred, so she grabs him and marches him away from the crowded gate, ignoring his protestations.

"Sorry, I just thought I smelled wemic."

She loves him so much in that moment and she has to hold on to things for balance because the world is spinning and threatening to leave her suddenly on the ground, or swirl and disappear into blackness. Her mind is trying to run through contingencies, options, and she keeps asking inane questions, clinging to him. But her thoughts are racing so fast they are barely more coherant than a high, shrill, whimpering scream - _You can't go. You can't go. You can't leave me._

"I want to die married to the woman I love."

Forget contracts. Forget subtlety. They return to the camp hand in hand. Jessily is about to suggest they get Jason to officiate, but Dirge suggests Sasagani instead, and she's right here in front of them, and looks glad to be chosen beneath her sadness. There are friends and family all around that Jessily recognises out of the corner of her eye as they straggle across to the Daggers. She clings to him and tries to shake the notion that the world is ending, that her life is over. Each moment is precious; she resolves not to waste them on sorrow.

"Can we have somewhere a little more private?"

Lilith takes them to a tent and she barely notices the contents as she falls on him with caresses. And there is wonder and there are tears in her eyes as her heart breaks, again, finally. She can barely look at him and all her clever words have fled, the clever words she had prepared over and over for this day, which she knew in her heart would come sooner or later.

"I was going to say so many things..."

They stagger out into the night, a shade and a broken girl, and although the thought passes Jessily's mind that an attack would likely kill them both, she does nothing about it but note the irony, distractedly, in passing. They are searching for an angel, and although it is not the angel that Jessily would have chosen, time is short - and it is not her choice, after all.

"I am Dirge," he declares. "I am Thanor Brakenshield. I am..."

And he gives them his name, all of them assembled, the whole tavern gone quiet for his performance, and the angel Primus falls on him with a strength she had not attributed to the playful eidolon, scattering part of the crowd as they go sliding across the ground. As she follows in a daze, falling to her knees to cling to her love's arm, the great claw almost catches her in the back of the head.

And then he was fading, and he was fading, and he was gone, and she clung to the patch of ground where he had been, and finally the tears came. There in the middle of the tavern, her hand on the ground where the last of his essence had drained away into nothingness, she did not care who saw her or heard her, or walked past or stepped on her. Her world had ended and there was no point in moving or breathing or anything left in the whole hollow edifice of reality except this sorrow, this huge and all-consuming sorrow.

"Are you okay, dearie?"

She let them lead her to their table, wondered vaguely if the drink they offered was poisoned. She didn't catch their names. It was odd that they didn't seem to care that he'd been undead, that he'd been a mokosh, all the things that she would have expected a group of even the most compassionate humans to care about. Instead they just comforted her, counselled her not to go out alone, asked where her friends were and if they'd come and look for her, told her she could stay with them as long as she needed and that she should be comforted by the fact that he knew where he was going and died confidently in the manner of his choosing.

What should she do now? There was a part of her that said, _rationally, what you want to do is end it, follow him into death, find a priest and have them bind you to the place where he has gone,_ but the animal fear in her was still too strong for that, not the fear of death so much but the fear of the pain that comes before death. When she saw Sas and Flip sit down at the table just behind them, she dithered for a moment, not wanting to leave the small and flickering circle of firelight that the ladies (oh how she wished she remembered their names) had built for her. But she had promised to honour his memory, and she knew that life must go on, so she stood shakily and took the couple of steps forwards and cried, "Sasagani!", as they noticed her there.

"Just tell me what to do."

She knew it was unfair, that she laid her sorrow on Sasagani like this, but what else was she to do? Everywhere she looked, she was reminded of the emptiness.

"I can't do that."

She stifled a sob, felt it melt into desperate anguish inside her. Harshly, she cried, "Then find me someone who can!" Not loudly, but sounding like each word was torn bleeding from her throat.

"Hai," replied Sasagani, and led her out into the night.

As they walked the clear night air washed over her, sweeping a few of the edges of the clouds of sorrow out of her mind, and she began, very tenatively, to plan again. Where was Sasagani taking her? She had first assumed when they went back to the table that she was just taking her to Flip, who was used to commanding people, and could give her sensible orders; then she had assumed she was taking her back to camp, to hand her over there. But she remembered that there was still respect for the Basilisk in these people and what she had asked for was a very Basilisk request, and she wondered for a moment if people had pieced together more than she had thought and they were taking her to Balurian to burn the taint away. She wondered if she should run. She didn't think she could cope with the pain.

"Where are you headed?" asked a passing Havocstani. 

"The Daggers," replied Sasagani smoothly, setting those paranoid worries Jessily had been nurturing to bed.

There are other problems when she gets back, and that is better, in a way. The oco is kind of surreal on top of all of the layers of feeling, but at least she gets to smile just slightly at Papa's antics, and the momentary paranoia at the Jaguarites who might disapprove of her obvious sorrow fades as swiftly as it came. Apparantly Papa had told them he thought she was the leader of the Rainbows, or should be, or something, so she 'led' them over to the Mill'en fire and then quietly retired for the night.

She would cry, from time to time, over the next day; but events continued to happen, despite the yawning emptiness that threatened to drown her every time she stopped for a moment. She supposed she should not be confused to find that after death, after the end, after everything, life went on.


	31. Ongoing Impressions, pt4

I had all kinds of plans, before Nefer came through the Vale. I was going to teach you things, if you would learn them. I was going to give you a present I could no longer use, in the hope he would teach you confidence and leadership, in the hope that you would do better for him than I ever could. But he had run off, and now I need him, and I have to go far away and I can't help you any more.

The world is dangerous, Hagar, but I have seen the clarity in your eyes and the way that I could almost hear you listening... stay on your toes, keep both ears to the wind, and maybe you will yet outrun the storm. Coyote spare you. Serpent guide you. Jaguar bring you joy.

\----

You're a cipher. What must be Actinian Venom on your face. I hate the stuff so much. It makes people reckless when they ought to be cautious, even if it does keep them going when they ought instead to stop. I see the heart on your cheek and the spade on the other. The Lover and the Gambler. What brings you here, Monty? Kahotep's business partner - that doesn't help much. He's a wemic. I can't tell if you're a gnoll or Merisusi, you don't look much like a Kamakuran but there are different kinds of them, too.

You're a cipher to me, Monty, part of the background, part of the furniture. Polite and moves things about. And I figure you've got my back, because Lilith trusts you, and that's enough for me.

\----

Our lives passed so briefly in the night. And for that I don't know if I should be sorry, or if I should be glad. You could have been a mother to me, but you had your own kittens, you had your own concerns. And if you had been like a mother to me, you would be hurting more now that I am gone. I wanted to draw you out, to take that potential inside you and make you glorious, but what good would that have done? Glory brings nothing but sorrow in its wake. Be at peace, Sha. Enjoy your family, raise your kittens, love your husband. Be at peace, and let your memories fade.

\----

After that meeting, the one between the festivals, I thought with perfect clarity - If there is anyone in this New World who I would die for, it would be Jocelyn. And I would. I would still, although I doubt you'll ever find me. I would die for you because I would know that if you asked such a thing then you would have a reason, a good and perfect reason; I would die for you because you are a shining jewel of life and it comes so naturally to you that you do not even notice sometimes. There is no other - not one, not even my love - that I would give this assurance.

But it's meaningless now. I cannot support you. I cannot even tell you where I have gone. To do so would endanger you unnecessarily, the very opposite of what I want for you. Stay safe, Jocelyn. Stay safe and keep shining, and your light will carry all around you safely home.

\----

Now you, perhaps, I hope to see again. I think we are on the same path, you and I, although we follow different lights through the dark places. I hope your journey keeps you as well as mine, and that when we find each other we can talk without the barriers, without the armour that we wear against the world. I... I want to apologise, not that I took him from you, because he was never yours, because I could never regret the things which have led us together, but that it was someone I would also love that I took him from rather than someone not worthy of my care - for that I am sorry.

Walk carefully, Ima. Watch yourself. Know your value, your immeasurable and intrinsic value, and do not let anyone convince you otherwise, do not surrender it to others. Walk carefully - and may the Wolverine give you joy in it, also.

\----

The way that I treated you was not at all fair. Right from the start I clutched at you, distant and idealised, the mother I had left behind. I tried to be useful to you, tried to be faithful to the nation we both love, but I never once allowed myself to consider your feelings, to see you as a person rather than a symbol. I think we could have fixed things, in time, that I could have learnt to see you and not simply the collection of labels I'd applied to you, but the world never gives us that time, does it?

I don't know what to say to you, Sasagani, now I am gone. I could pretend that we were friends, that I knew you, that I loved you. I could thank you for all you did for me - that I can do sincerely, from the bottom of my heart. But I cannot advise you, Sasagani, not like the others, because I barely knew you. I knew just enough of you to know there was so much more - but there was no time, and now I am gone.


	32. Mirror

She gazes into the clear water, surface smooth as glass and mirrored as polished steel, under the soothing light of the warm afternoon sunlight bathing the clearing in which she sits. 

Her headscarf looks back mockingly, a strange affectation changing the shape of her face, and under it sad eyes gaze longingly into her own.

But she knows that she cannot tarry here forever, however she would love to have nothing more important to do than gaze at her own features in the clear, clean water.

She has a few last errands to run, a few last places to visit, a few last people to leave notes for and collect essential supplies from, if she can.

It shouldn't be forever. It shouldn't have to be forever. She plans to return, in time, in plenty of time. But for now, it feels like forever. It feels like she will not return.

There are so many factors, so many variables, so many things she doesn't doubt she hasn't thought of yet. She rakes through the water with a paw, dissipating her reflection.

 _Wolverine, protect us,_ she prays to the ripples, knowing they will not hear her. Then she gathers her things, and she starts again to walk.


	33. What if Jessily had been a dracoscion?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon AU.

She woke gradually in the cargo hold of some unpleasantly swaying vessel, surrounded by the stench and mewling of miserable shell-shocked wemics. They had bound her hand and foot to the hull, which she supposed she should be proud of, as the pitiful wemics all appeared to be crawling around the place freely. Not that she was any theat to them in this state, after the beating she'd taken she was as helpless as a day-old kitten, chains or no chains.

Groaning, she pulled herself up to a slightly more dignified position - at least the chains were free enough to let her approximate sitting up - and surveyed the scene. A couple of the wemics bounded up to her with inane queries about whether she was okay (of course she wasn't okay, she'd hopelessly failed her dragon and also been beaten up by pirates, it was all very embarrassing, not to mention quite painful) and she half-heartedly tried to reassure them.

"I don't suppose you can do anything useful and get these chains loose, can you?" she asked without much hope. There was some argument and some ineffectual tugging at things and some big, sad eyes which suggested they couldn't, in fact, do anything useful, and then one of the pirates came down to investigate all the clanking and the wemics scattered fearfully into the shadows, leaving her smiling sarcastically at the guard.

"You're not going to make any trouble, are you, sweet cheeks?" he asked, his big stupid grey muzzle soaked in seawater in a way that made Jessily suddenly glad that she was tied up in this nice comfortable belowdecks rather than being up there in the gale that was tossing the ship around like a child's toy.

"What kind of trouble did you precisely think I was capable of making?" she retorted, wriggling her wrists weakly and clanking the chains to make her point obvious. "It's not like I'm going to be exactly up and swinging even if I wasn't bolted to the deck with enough ironmongery to drown a bag of kittens."

"Now now," he said, patronisingly, "some people will pay a good price for a pretty scaly like you, if you get that attitude sorted. I'd hate to have to kill you after we went to all that effort to take you alive."

"Some perverts, you mean," she spat. "Why don't you just kill me now and have done with it?"

As he was about to give an answer, there was a loud *crack* from abovedecks and the ship listed to one side alarmingly.

"Later, sweet cheeks," he contributed nervously as he swung back up the ladder to see what was going on, and Jessily sighed and tried to rearrange herself more comfortably as the wemics re-emerged from the shadows to continue their nauseating public terror and comforting of each other.

\----

In the chaos, one of the wemics proved they at least had the brains they were born with as well as a deeply misplaced sense of loyalty - the blessed thing brought her the key to the goddamn shackles, so instead of sinking miserably to the bottom of the trackless ocean and pointlessly expiring, she got to shake a couple of its hopeless 'friends' off the makeshift raft they'd almost got together and sail them both off towards the horizon of said trackless ocean. She was just getting to the stage of trying to work out if she'd regained enough strength to rip out Kamon's irritatingly friendly throat and slake her thirst on his remarkably tempting blood when they sighted land, and irritatingly floated along next to it for several hours until she got bored and leapt off the raft to swim for it.

Dragging herself up onto the beach, she was disappointed to see that the wemic had made it, too, and was forlornly trying to shake the sea out of his fur. She sat on a rock and emptied a respectable inland lake from her boots, but the lack of immenant danger came with rather an unpleasant sinking feeling.

The wemics had been ruined as soon as the pirates burst into the room, it was true, but despite the miserable conditions of the passage and a good dunking in sea water some parts of them probably would have been salvagable, had she not then gone and lost ninety percent of them trying to keep her own skin intact - not that it would have done anyone any good to have them loose without her, in fact it would have hopelessly diluted the market for them and losing them was probably entirely the right thing to do. Still, she was going to have some pretty fast talking to do when she got home, unless she could find something worthwhile to do on whatever hopeless atoll she'd just been washed up on to make up for it.

Straggling inland until they found a road, the warm sun already drying the sea from them - Kamon fitfully brushing his fur, matted with salt. Finding a caravan travelling on the road, striding up past its packbearers to find everyone was pulling something, but one disentangled itself to greet them.

"Headed to the Carnival?" asked the ruddy-cheeked human lady in her oversized, flowery summer dress. "You'll be late, mind, we're only planning to catch up with our people at the end. Offload some of this and haul away the dead."

"We've kind of got turned around," admitted Jessily breezily. "I don't suppose you can point us in the right direction, and we'll be on our way? No offence, but we'll likely make better time than you."

Directions duly acquired, they set out much more confidently, although there was the distinct feeling of people speculating on their possible survival behind them.

\----

They entered the site of the Carnival and immediately paused for a moment, taking in the sights. Some kind of snake-person thing appeared to be prostituting herself in the main thoroughfare by the tavern tent, while angels of all descriptions, one of whom had a menagerie of walking statues and crystalline beings attending it, looked on. There was a distinct lack of obvious dracosions, which Jessily thought was probably a good thing, but rather an overwhelming number of possible avenues of approaching getting something useful out of the occasion.

She was just about to head to the bar to get a drink, having found some small change still in her pockets, when she overheard a snatch of conversation from a nearby table.

"...but why _wouldn't_ you want to worship the Jaguar?"

Kamon's ears pricked up, being the terrible emotional open book that all the wemics seemed to be, and Jessily bowed to the inevitable and went to make sure her last surviving slave didn't get himself in _too_ much trouble with the tree creature priest thing that he obviously wanted to introduce himself to...


	34. Good Future, Bad Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon AU.

It is three hundred years since the closing of the Maelstrom trapped them on the side that was dearer to their hearts in any case, and a handful more since she was last alive.

Changes come and go, victories and defeats, the ebb and flow of politics and nations. There's scarcely anything one might recognise as Havocstan, but several successor states are doing more or less the same thing, and true slavery is increasingly rare, although serfs and indentured servitude and other such arrangements to do roughly the same are still widespread and common.

The gods seem to change their minds every week about what should be done with those who have ceased to live but remain bound to the world. Jessily doesn't have time to be concerned about such things any more. Curses and fanatics come and go, like all the exigencies of unlife.

Right now they need to finish assembling the great bone fleet, so that when the sorcerers unlock the secret of accelerating the Maelstrom's natural cycle, they are ready to ride the wave of magic out into the Old World and bring a wave of enlightenment crashing down on those far shores.

Containing the Things from the far south is practically a full time occupation for the armies, and Jessily hopes that the current proposed solution will not fail dramatically again this time, as the grand plan to invade the Old World could do with some of those armies.

This isn't heaven on earth yet. Every person does not have the tools and opportunities they need to carve out their life and make their own joy as they serve, in turn, the joy of others. But it's closer than it was, and she has plenty of time.

\----

She barely remembers the moment they caught up with her. The dancing, the chanting, the victorious ophidian stained with her blood, the last of her life cascading through the channels leading from the blood-caked, obsidian-inlaid bronze of the sacrificial altar. Darkness, and light.

This wasn't their crude base camp in the shadow of the marsh-trees, where she should be bound. This wasn't Lamentation, where their backup plan should have taken her. This wasn't one of those places at all. The colours were so bright, the world in high saturation. The scent was intoxicating, blood and musk and jungle, the sounds of love and laughter echoing all around.

In the days to follow there was blood and there was pain and there was hunting through the dark, dense jungle packed full of life. There were endless processions of the faithful, huge feasting-halls and little side rooms, enormous beds and rough stone floors, palatial tents, huge expanses of hide-covered ground, lonely trees, shaded riverbanks. All suffering was meaningful, here. Every cry of anguish was carefully timed to bring another's joy.

There were the souls of those who went before and reconciliation and punishment and things she hadn't known she had it in her to enjoy. But that was the thing about this place. All suffering was meaningful, and even in service every moment which could possibly bring joy was painted with broad strokes of ecstacy, the rainbow colours of joy swirling around and around.

As they watched her weep, as they watched her scream, as they saw her through grief and despair and even maddening stretches of boredom, she discovered that few were the true monsters who would deny her any scrap of their joy, and in any case there was such demand that she was rarely with one for longer than she could bear.

Even for the sacrifice, there was joy in this place.

It was so beautiful.


	35. What if Jessily had followed the Basilisk?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon AU.

Her head was spinning. She couldn't take it any more. The words of the angel, the message he had brought... they had been the final straw. On a back that should have broken some time ago. She spoke to Jason for a while, but she knew that was futile, always nothing more than displacement activity.

She had to find Sasagani. Sasagani would know what to do.

But the little medic was nowhere to be found, and the next day she was so busy, and so happy, and Jessily couldn't bring herself to take that from her. In a corner of the field, back away from the camp, she renounced her devotion, quietly and without ceremony.

Then there was the evening, and the morning, and before she quite knew what she was doing there was the ritual.

The battle line went forward, what little there was of it, and her feet took up the order to retreat and headed straight past the gun line into the welcoming arms of the Mill'en camp, which was quietly and efficiently closing ranks around the escapees, pulling them into their back rooms and hiding places.

The taint hung heavy on her soul as she waited with the others, and as she quietly, trembling, stepped forwards.

She had always known that she did not take pain well, and she would have bolted if the fear of death and eternal damnation, and the firm but comforting hands on her shoulders, had not kept here there until his gaze fell on her. She had thought to ready herself for it, but the experience was worse than she ever could have imagined and she screamed and writhed and begged for death to take her, for someone to rescue her, for the Jaguar himself to do whatever he wished with her as the price for her deliverance.

But when it was over, it was the Basilisk that she asked for, to take the place of the gaping wound in her soul.

After all, were not knowing your place and being enabled to achieve your full potential both the same, at heart? Had she not discovered that some were content to serve, and that many found in serving a good leader their greatest joy, and many found in leading (and leading well) theirs?

\----

It had been difficult, at first, but they knew the gods understood, and so they understood too, at least the final part if not the journey there. He, too, understood after a fashion, although she wore that which he gave her and knew not whether she would use it in the final reckoning or not.

Then there was the wound, and the night, and the tent.

"The others need me. Helena needs me. Jason needs me. Lilith needs me."

"I need you," he growls.

"I..." she looks down, wonders why the tears that are almost choking her are not falling. "I can't abandon my people for you. You of all people, you should know that."

\----

The road was long and hard, in the shadow of the gods, among the people she sometimes still thought of in the terms of the Onontakha - the Invaders, the Inner Islanders, the squabbling monkey-children and bird-brains and scavenger-dogs, even the overgrown cubs. But the virtue of loyalty was everlasting, the value of teamwork unmistakable, and the flame of Havocstan unquenchable, however it flickered from time to time.

She wondered, as she regained the use of her limbs just too late to be of any use with them - damn that crazy little Fidelian witch who had run past and stuck the knife in just as she was halfway to her tools, and nicked off with them and the herbs when further pursuit meant she couldn't stick around long enough to finish the job - how long it would take to find him. But, she thought meditively as she uncorked the bottle and put it to her lips, it would scarcely matter. She would have eternity, if she was careful, if she played her cards right.

Her chosen necromancer and all of his friends watched helplessly as her shade staggered up to them, already leaking essence gently from every surface, and cried quietly, "Save me!", as she crumbled to dust.


	36. What if Jessily had been on the other side of the battle?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon AU.

It was strange how her life had become a mirror of his.

When she had come to this place she had been... polite. Quiet. Cultured. Refined. Sure, she'd shown a little grit in not passively drowning in the shipwreck, in making her way to the carnival, but she'd immediately surrendered her new-found spine to the representatives of the faith she'd sleepwalked into as an adolescent, done whatever she thought would impress them the most.

Then they sacrificed the whalers, and everything changed.

Sure, she went home with them in the morning, because what could you do? But from that point on she was their enemy, not their friend. She remained devoted to the Jaguar for a time, out of inertia, but after the successful assassination of the red-handed shrine-builder Emile, the church of the Huntress accepted her as one of their own.

Sometimes she could practically get them to take out each other. She was particularly proud of the death of the mass murderer and psychopath Olrich, on the steps of his own fort, aided and abetted by the other Rainbows who thought they were taking him out for his opinions on the undead and necromancers in the Havocstan ranks. Whichever way that had gone would have been a victory, and pretending to defend him then stumbling back in all distressed while the others faded into the night she kept both of her enemies close and protective of her.

When a certain corpse gave her his Name, she practically skipped to her friends to provide it, which is how she found herself swiftly attached to the Flembic medical corp on the eve of battle.

Brief introductions all round - a few of them already know whose side she's on, but to many it is a surprise and something that needs to be communicated as on the field of battle she doesn't want anyone to mistake her for an enemy combatant - enough of the people not in this camp to hear about it who might still do that. Then it's back to roughly what she'd expect from the Havocstan actions she's been involved in - the waiting and watching, the falling in with the mob as it is called, the stop and start as the lines move.

On the floor, picking up the wounded, she hardly gets a sense of how the battle is moving. Someone tells her that her information was wrong, and she curses under her breath as she puts the finishing touches on a wounded wemic of the Glorious Hammer and someone else chucks a Pumice down him so he can get back to the fray. But there are too many injured to even stop and look up, until the army is scattered across the entirety of the open plain before the Havocstan camp and the isolated resistance is being mopped up.

She looks around. Look to your points. There's Jamis, he's been giving the orders for the medical corps, checking with people that no wounded are languishing untended in corners. There's Jean De Winter, hunting for those who have slipped away, putting the knife to the throat of those who haven't quite hurried along adequately for him. There's Caterina, trying to get some semblance of order back into what has become a looting rabble.

There's no more urgent surgery here. One more thing left to do.

Determined and graceful, slipping through the angry flame-fueled crowds as effortlessly as a well-choreographed dance, she heads for the shrine of the Jaguar. Ducking inside, the windchimes tinkle incongruously, but their warning is lost in the echoes of the loud argument that has gathered around the Merchant shrine.

Everything's where she expects it to be. Skull and box, she throws to one side for the moment, as she yanks off the altar-cloth of jaguar fur, scattering the sacred objects onto the ground; smashes the glass of the picture-frame; pours out the stash of Thorn's blessing - nobody deserves that stuff, not even the people it might be useful to compromise with it - tears off her blood-stained gloves, and leaves them mockingly on the altar-table in the place of the previous accouterments.

Feeling the power of the place fading, she purrs in satisfaction at a job well done, takes the skull in one hand, the box under the other arm, and saunters out straight through all the looting crowds back to the tent her friends had designated for meeting after the battle was done.


	37. "You don't understand what it is to be a slave, do you?"

She tries not to look frightened in front of Doris. It's like dealing with wild animals, her mind tells her. It's all about the body langauge. You are in charge here.

But she doesn't want to be, she doesn't want to be, she desperately doesn't want to be in charge of this. From the moment Emile handed her the documents she knew that it could not possibly go anywhere but wrong.

She keeps herself upright, keeps herself strong, keeps herself from shaking as she hands the papers to Doris and the other wemic nods and turns aside. The keys come off the hook in the shack wall and Doris passes them to her. "I hope you've brought more for the storehouses," she says as she looks over the basket of food that Jessily has brought with her, with melons from the valley and olive-bread and shrimp from the market just over the border.

"It'll come," Jessily promises.

They head out to the cages together, Doris talking animatedly of the shrine's construction, of how she's looking forwards to teaching. Jessily smiles and nods, although none of the smiles reach her eyes. Her eyes are hunted. Looking for the moment to run. Looking for a way to escape.

The slaves are sitting dispiritedly in their exercise yard. It appears that little effort has been made to keep them comfortable or occupied, only enough to keep them secured. They look confused at the basket she carries, and she's confused too, she doesn't know why she brought such an incongruous thing to this scene of deprivation and despair. Did she think they were going to sit down on the grass with her and have a nice picnic? The twee blanket over the wicker basket silently mocked her naivity.

"Are you sure you want to go in there with them?" asked Doris with matronly concern.

Jessily wasn't sure. She wasn't sure at all. "I didn't even bring any tents," she mumbled, nonsensically.

"It's not that bad, you know," Doris reassured her. "The weather's been quite nice here, even for winter. They've got plenty of blankets. I bring them water every day, and take away the buckets."

Jessily felt sick to her stomach, and kind of numb.

"I should have brought more paper," she continued, dazedly. "More paper, and some pens. I didn't think..."

"They wouldn't know what to do with pen and paper, dear," Doris assured her. "Well, the ponces might, but most of them are spoils of war. They'd killed all the smart revolutionaries, or at least they'd gone into hiding, before someone went through and picked these sorry ones up."

"What _do_ they want, then?" asked Jessily, trying very hard to stay in control, to sound like she knew what she was doing. "What could I give them?"

"Now now, dear," Doris admonished her, "you don't owe them anything, except maybe a good feeding. You own them, remember? Not the other way round?"

Jessily thought about trying to explain, but words failed her.

"Now, dear," said Doris, "I don't think it's a good idea for you to climb in the cages with them, not right now, not with the way you're talking. Why don't you just come around the front and we'll call them forwards, and they can introduce themselves to you?"

"O...okay," quavered Jessily, the kindness in Doris' voice breaking through her resolve, just for a moment before she pulled herself back together.

\----

The slaves lined up along the edge of their enclosure. Some of them weren't very old. There was a freckle-faced boy from Freiboden who couldn't be more than fourteen. A couple of them had been dragged to the front by the others and left in one corner, apparently in the grip of some kind of fever. Two men and a woman who were maybe in their thirties held themselves apart from the others a little, faces showing more caution than the desperate curiosity - and occasional outbreaks of frank leering - evidenced on most of the rest. Those would be the Flembic, then.

"Hello?" asked Jessily timidly.

"Gentlemen and gentlemen," said Doris, with confidence born of long experience, "may I introduce your new owner, Jessily of Havocstan?"

The response was mixed - some nods, a small chorus of 'Hello, Jessily', a rather sarcastic ragged cheer.

"I'm afraid I've never kept slaves before," admitted Jessily, "so you're going to have to bear with me a little here. I've organised this season's food for you all, but I'm not sure what else to do."

"You could let us go," complained the young Freiboden lad.

"Yeah," chorused a slightly older lass behind him. "If you don't have any work for us to do, we could go off and find our own, just as well as sitting here."

"There might be work next season," offered Jessily awkwardly. This wasn't going as she had planned, rather more as she had feared.

The shrine loomed in the background of the scene, and in the background of all their thoughts. It was obvious what they were thinking, but none of them dared speak it.

"Is there anything you want?" tried Jessily again. "Any little things that I could get you, to make your lives more pleasant?"

"We're slaves, miss," pointed out a Freibodan girl. "Our lives don't get to be pleasant."

Jessily looked at the ground. Kept herself from saying anything they didn't need to hear. Looked up again.

"Look," she said, letting a little of the anger out. Only a little, as it threatened to bring the tears with it. "I can't make your lives better if you won't work with me on this."

The Flembic slaves conferred amongst themselves, very softly, barely using words, and then the woman spoke up.

"I wouldn't mind some new clothes," she said, carefully, watching Jessily like a hawk.

"Then I'll get you some," promised Jessily. "They might be Amun-Sa styles, mind. It's hard to get anything else in the area."

"As long as they're bright," said the woman, "and clean."

Jessily nodded, then looked thoughtfully at the assembled.

"I want to talk to you," she said, "each of you, one at a time. I've got some nice food here for you all to share, just a few things I picked up on my travels, and I'll draw up a rota and you can come up to the shack with Doris and I, and tell me what you're after, without having to be afraid of each other." There were a few murmurings at this, but the tone suggested she was on the right track. She looked awkwardly at the fevered slaves. "And I want to see those two tonight, there are herbs that might help with that."

She gave the basket to Doris, who stepped forwards and unlocked a door, then locked it behind her and unlocked the inner door, and handed it to a confident-looking Freibodan teen. As the Freibodeners settled down to apportion the basket's contents equitably, or at least argue interminably about how to do so, and the Flembic looked on in a mixture of quiet disdain and eagerness that they not miss out on their part of the bounty, Doris took Jessily's hand and began to lead her away from the scene.

"I don't know what you're trying to do," Doris admitted, "but it looks like they're beginning to respect you for it, at least."

"I've got a couple of things in my pouch," replied Jessily, "and they can sleep in the shack tonight, right? The fevered ones. I'll need to watch them overnight to see how they're recovering."

"You get yourself settled down and eat your dinner," Doris insisted, "and then we'll come back here for them and you can practice medicine to your heart's desire. But not on an empty stomach."

Jessily relented, and followed Doris away from the shrine and the slaves.

\----

She watched them through the night, occasionally feeding them sips of herbal tea and changing the damp flannels on their foreheads, and in the morning they woke much restored.

"Frederick Callanz," one of them introduced himself.

"Juanita Deloren," offered the other.

She met them, one by one, in the evenings when her head was spinning too much to concentrate any longer on her studies. The rickety desk with a chair each side, and Doris standing behind her, a solid presence in the room, refusing to sit. "They need someone to be formal with them, dearie," she explained.

Most of them wanted simple things. A certain kind of food. Some wood and a whittling-knife. Games and amusements. Better clothes and fragrant soap. A curtain on a curtain-rail to hang across the enclosure for a little more privacy.

A few of them were more complicated.

\----

"What's your name?"

"Jamie Delemere," he said, sullenly.

"Where do you come from?"

"Freiboden." He looked contemptuous. "You know that. It's on the contract."

"Okay. What is it that you want? I can't provide everything you might want, but..."

He cut her off before she'd finished her spiel. "You can't give me my freedom," he spat.

She got up from the desk. He watched her warily. She headed over to the door, and she opened it.

"Go on, then," she said.

"It's a trap," he replied, dismissively. "You'll hunt me down. Or I'll wander and starve."

"What if I didn't?" she asked. "You could walk into Amun-Sa Over Ocean. It's not far."

"Then I'd come for you," he said, evenly, the revolutionary fervor burning in his eyes. "I'd get my people, and I'd come for you and your shrine and your cages. You don't understand what it is to be a slave, do you?"

Not letting him see her face until she had composed it, she closed the door again.

"Then you're right," she said, keeping the sadness out of her voice quite well, sounding only mildly regretful. "If that's what you're going to do with it, I can't give you your freedom, can I?"

He looked very satisfied with himself.

"Is there anything I can get you? That you'll admit to wanting? Better blankets, perhaps. Something to keep you occupied."

"You can't buy my loyalty," he said. "You can't apologise for what you've done with trinkets."

\----

"What's your name?"

"Henry Larouche," he replied, somewhat nervous.

"Where do you come from?"

"Terino." There was a weight of longing there that she had heard from several of those who had given the name of their hometown.

"And you want to go back there?" she surmised.

"More than anything," he said, in a manner more heartfelt than any she'd heard so far.

She stood, went to the door, and opened it.

"You can likely find a ship from Ma'aktu," she said, "although you might have to wait a little for one going straight home."

The man didn't move. "But... my sister," he said. "And my brother."

She returned to her seat, leaving the door open.

"So," she said, "not more than anything, then."

"No," he admitted.

"I'll ask them," she said, "and I'm sure you will, too. You can leave together, if that is your wish."

"Why would you do this?" asked the man, confused.

"It won't be easy for you," she warned. Avoiding his question, perhaps, but also answering it more truly than she would admit to herself. "There aren't many humans in Amun-Sa-over-Ocean, and you'll have to figure out how to earn your passage."

The man nodded. "So it isn't really a choice at all, then."

"There's always a choice," she replied. "I mean it. I won't stop you leaving. But I won't help you any further if you do. I can't. I don't have the... resources... to help everyone."

The man nodded carefully. "Thank you," he replied. She couldn't help but smile.

"Don't thank me yet," she admonished. "You haven't even started your journey."

"I'll talk to the others," he said decisively.

"Was there anything else?"

\----

"You're Henry's sister, aren't you?"

"Yes," said the woman. "I'm Lydia Larouche."

"And do you want to go with him?" she asked.

"I..." The woman looked at her hands for a moment, and then brightened into a face that was presumably meant to be convincing and friendly. "Henry does get awfully excitable, you know," she said, as if inviting Jessily into some kind of conspiracy. "You shouldn't take these things he says about leaving very seriously, you know."

"So you're not leaving," replied Jessily, somewhat flatly. She wasn't having any of this lady's nonsense.

"Oh, no, no, not at all," Lydia reassured her. "Where would we go? How would we eat? I fear we would end up rather a worse situation than in your exemplary care."

She was wearing the rather pleasant Amun-Sari robe / dress / thing that Jessily had got her from the market after a little further inquiry into colours and styles. It was much nicer than anything Jessily had bought for herself since she'd washed up on the beach, about a year and several lifetimes ago.

"Right," replied Jessily, a little skeptically. "So. Was there anything in particular I could get you?"

There was, of course. Lydia was apparently something of a seamstress, and had decided that the best way to pass her time would undoubtedly be making some nice clothes for the poor ignorant Freiboden she was unfortunately confined with. Jessily wrote quite a shopping list of fabrics and ribbons and other sewing paraphenalia, and promised also to procure the makings of a proper cup of tea, and Lydia left well-satisfied.

"You're too nice to them, dear," noted Doris as they were heading back after returning Lydia to the slave quarters.

\----

"What's your name?"

The girl looked sullen, like she was considering not replying at all.

"You don't have to give me your name," Jessily reassured her. "I just thought it might help."

"Let me go," said the girl.

Jessily got up, went to the door, opened it.

"That doesn't fool me," said the girl.

"It's not a trick," Jessily insisted. "Just step out the door, and keep walking. I won't follow you, and I won't stop you, and neither will anyone who I can stop."

She saw the girl's eyes flick up to Doris, then return to her.

"And what about food? And water?"

"Well, you'd have to sort those things out for yourself, wouldn't you?" replied Jessily, a touch of impatience creeping into her voice. "That's the kind of thing you have to do, when you're free."

"But..." started the girl. She stopped for a moment to marshal her thoughts. "I didn't choose to come here. I don't even know where we are."

"I could give you directions to the nearest settlement," offered Jessily. "Or you could follow me to market tomorrow, if you like. I need to go to pick up some things for the others, anyway."

"To what market?" asked the girl suspiciously. "Anyway, I don't have any money. I couldn't buy anything at your market anyway."

"Well, I was going to go to the one in the village just over the border," replied Jessily. "I can see it might be a bit awkward for you, being a human female on your own in Amun-Sa-over-Ocean, but I'm sure you'd cope. If you want to be free, that is."

"Of course I want to be free!" insisted the girl.

"Then go," said Jessily. "Nothing's stopping you."

"But... I'd starve," the girl complained.

"Look," said Jessily, getting weary of this now. "People do starve out there, yes. They do it all the time. I don't want you to starve. I'm quite happy to keep you here, and feed you, and buy you dresses or cards or pretty beads and string or whatever it is that you want, if I can get it for pocket change from the market. But you've got to decide for yourself."

"Decide what?" asked the girl.

"Whether you want to be kept," replied Jessily, falling in to her 'explaining things' voice. "Whether you want to be fed, and clothed, and watered, and have a roof over your head, and maybe next season I'll send you to someone else and you'll have to work for them if they ask you. Or whether you want to go. Whether you want to make your own way in this world, and starve or thirst or sleep on the cold ground at night, or otherwise, under your own power."

"This isn't my world," said the girl. "I didn't choose to be here."

"There are choices we can make," continued Jessily, "and choices that are made for us. I'm sorry that people have made some unpleasant choices for you. I'm sorry that people brought you here against your will. But now you have a choice to make. This is a choice _you_ can make."

"I don't want to starve," replied the girl, in a small voice on the edge of tears.

"That's okay," said Jessily, automatically comforting. "You're not going to starve. But you are going to have to stay here." She watched the girl as she pulled herself together, a little of the defiance gone from her eyes, and something inside Jessily raged against that. Some part of her wanted to tell the girl to leave, to kick her out into the world, to *make* her prove to herself that she could do it, that she could survive on her own in a hostile land.

"I'd..." said the girl nervously. "I'd like to try making some jewelry. Not anything complicated. Just something to do with my hands."

Jessily smiled. "I'll get you some supplies, when I go to the market."

"I'm Anna," said the girl, spontaneously. "Anna Deville."

"Thank you, Anna," replied Jessily sincerely. "Is there anything else?"

\----

In the end, not one of them chose her offer of escape.

(It was hard, after that, to think of them as people. Or maybe not so much that. Maybe it was that it was becoming harder to think of *herself* as people. People were these other creatures, like the slaves, like the Amici family. Just trying to get by. Working for themselves. Worrying where the next meal would come from. Never looking out, never looking up, tied to their past, rather than reaching out to take the future with both hands...)


	38. Dustworld

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon AU

There is a mountain.

(she still finds herself calling them fontanelles, sometimes, it is a much prettier name)

On the side of the mountain, there is an angel.

(this is a stupid form to climb a mountain in, but she was caught out in it while comforting the last survivors and she dares not return)

The voices do not tell her to do things any more, but she cannot function without orders.

(she wonders if they just gave her this order to get her out of their hair, to keep her out of their plans, to send her where she could not cause much harm)

Halfway up the mountain, there is a crystal dome.

(so many caves, basements, little shelters. sometimes they ran out of air. it was much less neat that way than when they were simply little piles of dust.)

The dome is inhabited.

\-----

It was not so much difficult to travel, as pointless.

In the first days they had clung to each other.

In the following days they had tried to help.

In the days after that they had searched.

In the months and years to follow?

They had grown paranoid.

They were remnants.

They hid.

(everywhere was the same; everywhere was the dust)

Some of the forms made it easier.

Easier to forget. Easier to wait.

Easier to farm the crystals.

Easier to do nothing.

Easier to be.

Eaiser.

(they caught it growing some young, once. but it was indoctrinated enough to be ashamed. they let it teach them, one at a time.)

(they kept them broken and locked away, because of the fear, because they could not attract attention)

(because if one got out, their location would be discovered, and the others would come)

(the others would come and destroy them, for what they had done)

(destroy them, for what they represented)

(for what they were)

\-----

There is an angel, and there is a crystal, and there is a girl, and there is a man.

You can see right through the latter two.

They are barely there.

"Don't kill it," hisses the girl. "It will come back, and tell them."

"I won't hurt you," said the angel. "I won't tell anyone you're here. I just need to check the fontanelle... the ritual site."

"You will not leave this place," rumbled the man.

"You cannot keep me," said the angel.

"Come in," said the girl. "Come in, and..."

She trailed off. What did they have to offer?

"I didn't think there were any of you left," said the angel. "I thought all the Returned had passed beyond."

"No," said the man, "but you should remember it that way. We are not here. You did not see us."

But the girl tugged on his arm impatiently, and he was silent.

"Come in," she repeated. "Tell us everything. We have been away from the world for so long. If we have to move on, at least tell us of the world before you go to make your report. What news is there of the gods? What are the crystals making of the world? What is it to the south?"

\-----

There is a mountain.

On the side of the mountain, there is an angel.

Everything was not lost. Everywhere was not the same.

There was still hope in the world. Hope, and a long journey ahead.

There were still some free souls in the world, after all.

There is a crystal with her.

The crystal smiles.


	39. The Forsaken Heavens

_It's getting colder. I can't tell if it's the time of year, or the canopy going away._

You can't teach a wemic not to pray. She's fairly sure, now, that the uncaring ether does not hear her. She is careful, still, not to give anything away. But not to pray is like trying not to think, so she lets the inconsequential thoughts pass through her mind and find their way out, where they would certainly once have passed into the forsaken heavens.

If the gods hear us at all. If they don't get their information some other way, some way that we don't understand.

She pulled her cloak tight around her. Making clothes was more difficult than she had expected. Animal skins decayed without proper treatment, and they were hardly in one place for long enough to even dry them out, let alone to harvest and weave from the free-growing gossamer bushes. She'd patched her cloak with a discarded Onontakhan tent, but just a cloak wasn't enough, however warm.

 _Dying of something stupid like being too cold would be horribly ironic,_ she thought, and that thought was just for herself.


	40. Some Quicksilver Creature

When she finds herself thinking of the days before this endless flight, she often finds herself thinking of Lilith.

The world seems more solid, more reassuring, that it can have a Lilith in it. Even at her most vulnerable, that night at the Wake, unable to sleep without something to replace his arms around her; even with her soul in thrall to some quicksilver creature who had no respect for mortals, no matter his fine words; even thus, Lilith would smile, Lilith would be there, Lilith would count in the coins and sit you down with a cup of tea and make sure it was all okay.

 _I hope you got your soul back, Lilith,_ she thinks sleepily as she is finally overcome by the exhaustion of another wilderness day.

It does not occur to her that Lilith could be dead. How could such a solid thing simply disappear from the world? Surely the sky would be rent asunder, the very land cry out and shift at her passing?


End file.
